| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: daughter's mouth, and the unfeigned homage of my admiration evidently
touched her deeply. Her manner changed and became even more engaging;
she dropped all formality as she said:
"I am much pleased with you, and I hope we shall remain good friends."
The words struck me as charmingly naive, but I did not let this
appear, for I saw at once that the prudent course was to allow her to
believe herself much deeper and cleverer than her daughter. So I only
stared vacantly and she was delighted. I kissed her hands repeatedly,
telling her how happy it made me to be so treated and to feel at my
ease with her. I even confided to her my previous tremors. She smiled,
put her arm round my neck, and drawing me towards her, kissed me on
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: one's main object, ousting everything else, marriage, union with
the being you love, is a great mistake. And an obvious one, if you
think about it. Object, marriage. Well, you marry; and what then?
If you had no other object in life before your marriage, it will be
twice as hard to find one.
As a rule, people who are getting married completely forget
this.
So many joyful events await them in the future, in wedlock and
the arrival of children, that those events seem to constitute life
itself. But this is indeed a dangerous illusion.
If parents merely live from day to day, begetting children,
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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 The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: point out that this advance is entirely due to a few individual
artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their
standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and
supply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style
that has really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary
power, not over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual
creation, Mr Irving, had his sole object been to give the public
what they wanted, could have produced the commonest plays in the
commonest manner, and made as much success and money as a man could
possibly desire. But his object was not that. His object was to
realise his own perfection as an artist, under certain conditions,
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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 A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always
graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near
by, sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you
know, and sometimes she can't hold herself any longer, but sounds
the 'charge,' and turns me loose! and you can take my word for it,
if the battalion hasn't too much of a start we catch up and go over
the breastworks with the front line.
"Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not
ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes. It's because
of her drill. She's got a fort, now - Fort Fanny Marsh. Major-
General Tommy Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons
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