| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: Catholic devil, or, at least, used to Catholic ways. So then I
reasoned thus: if this sign of the cross were used in a Popey
manner it would be sinful, but when it is used only to protect men
from a devil, which is a thing harmless in itself, the sign too
must be, as a bottle is neither good nor bad, harmless. For the
sign is neither good nor bad. But if the bottle be full of gin,
the gin is bad; and if the sign be made in idolatry bad, so is the
idolatry.' And, very like a native pastor, he had a text apposite
about the casting out of devils.
"'And who has been telling you about the Evil Eye?' I asked.
"He admitted it was Case. Now, I am afraid you will think me very
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: after pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed,
white-faced maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and
wore clicking pattens and a shawl in the fashion of a hood.
She had not contented herself with opening the door from above
by the usual arrangement of a creaking pulley, though she
had looked down at me first from an upper window, dropping the
inevitable challenge which in Italy precedes the hospitable act.
As a general thing I was irritated by this survival of
medieval manners, though as I liked the old I suppose I ought
to have liked it; but I was so determined to be genial that I
took my false card out of my pocket and held it up to her,
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