| 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: the reason why I never married."
"What!--a treasure--dug up?"
"Yes--buried wealth--treasure trove. Come out of the ground. What
I kept on saying--regular treasure. . . ." He looked at me with
unusual disrespect.
"It wasn't more than a foot deep, not the top of it," he said.
"I'd 'ardly got thirsty like, before I come on the corner."
"Go on," I said. "I didn't understand."
"Why! Directly I 'it the box I knew it was treasure. A sort of instinct
told me. Something seemed to shout inside of me--'Now's your chance--
lie low.' It's lucky I knew the laws of treasure trove or I'd 'ave been
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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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: what you're entitled to have looked to me to mention to you. I've
some evidence that perhaps would be really dissuasive, but I
propose to invite Mss Anvoy to remain in ignorance of it."
"And to invite me to do the same?"
"Oh you don't require it--you've evidence enough. I speak of a
sealed letter that I've been requested to deliver to her."
"And you don't mean to?"
"There's only one consideration that would make me," I said.
Gravener's clear handsome eyes plunged into mine a minute, but
evidently without fishing up a clue to this motive--a failure by
which I was almost wounded. "What does the letter contain?"
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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 Symposium by Plato: True. For he who is anything cannot want to be that which he is?
Very true.
And yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or
being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in
that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or
is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the
possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their
respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can
desire that which he has? Therefore, when a person says, I am well and
wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to
have what I have--to him we shall reply: 'You, my friend, having wealth
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt
when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything
in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer.
A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
"quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year
of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words
can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after
reaching New York, I said: "I felt as one might feel upon escape
from a den of hungry lions." Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain,
may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill
of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were,
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