| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: the courtyard was spacious, and there were good stables.
The lawyer wished to live in the Chaussee d'Antin, where everything is
fresh and bright, where the fashions may be seen while still new,
where a well-dressed crowd throngs the Boulevards, and the distance is
less to the theatres or places of amusement; but he was obliged to
give way to the coaxing ways of a young wife, who asked this as his
first favor; so, to please her, he settled in the Marais. Granville's
duties required him to work hard--all the more, because they were new
to him--so he devoted himself in the first place to furnishing his
private study and arranging his books. He was soon established in a
room crammed with papers, and left the decoration of the house to his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: "Three drops are enough," at last thought he; "I may, at least,
cool my lips with it."
He opened the flask and was raising it to his lips, when his
eye fell on an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought it
moved. It was a small dog, apparently in the last agony of death
from thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs extended
lifelessly, and a swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips
and throat. Its eye moved to the bottle which Hans held in his
hand. He raised it, drank, spurned the animal with his foot, and
passed on. And he did not know how it was, but he thought that a
strange shadow had suddenly come across the blue sky.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: with the bulky, old-fashioned leather note case stamped on the back in
gilt letters, "Bills Discounted." In this were the notes due the bank
with their attached securities, and the major, in his rough way,
dumped the lot upon his desk and began to sort them over.
By this time Nettlewick had finished his count of the cash. His pencil
fluttered like a swallow over the sheet of paper on which he had set
his figures. He opened his black wallet, which seemed to be also a
kind of secret memorandum book, made a few rapid figures in it,
wheeled and transfixed Dorsey with the glare of his spectacles. That
look seemed to say: "You're safe this time, but--"
"Cash all correct," snapped the examiner. He made a dash for the
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a two-hundred-and-fifty-
dollar supply of the most gratifying and efficient lines of grub that
money could buy. I always was an admirer of viands in their more
palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy are not only inartistic
to my stomach, but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I
thought of Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham, president of the Sunrise &
Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would miss the luxury of his home
fare as is so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I sunk half of mine
and Caligula's capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned
provisions as Burdick Harris or any other professional kidnappee ever
saw in a camp.
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