| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: SURFACE. You needn't stay.
SERVANT. No--Sir----
[Exit SERVANT.]
SURFACE. Here's a Chair--Sir Peter--I beg----
SIR PETER. Well--now we are alone--there IS a subject--my dear
Friend--on which I wish to unburthen my Mind to you--a Point
of the greatest moment to my Peace--in short, my good Friend--
Lady Teazle's conduct of late has made me very unhappy.
SURFACE. Indeed I'm very sorry to hear it--
SIR PETER. Yes 'tis but too plain she has not the least regard
for me--but what's worse, I have pretty good Authority to suspect
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: darkened canvas, with streaming spars and dripping ropes. The
down-pours thicken. Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like
the passage of a shadow above the firmament of gray clouds, filters
down upon the ship. Now and then the rain pours upon your head in
streams as if from spouts. It seems as if your ship were going to
be drowned before she sank, as if all atmosphere had turned to
water. You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded and deafened, you
are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated, streaming all
over as if your limbs, too, had turned to water. And every nerve
on the alert you watch for the clearing-up mood of the Western
King, that shall come with a shift of wind as likely as not to whip
The Mirror of the Sea |
