| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand
out of the unseen and grips your heart about. You know it takes
your common self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither
slow nor hasty, neither angry nor afraid. So it was with me.
I came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside.
"Stop this folly!" I said. "Where is my boy?"
"You see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is
no deception---"
I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous
movement. I snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open
a door to escape. "Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly
endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my
chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy.
But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach
and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite
so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness
and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street,
a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well
in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me. The fugitive
in question was known in Baltimore as "Allender's Jake," but in New York
he wore the more respectable name of "William Dixon." Jake, in law,
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