| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable
about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of
the other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is
disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish
in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to
the water. At such times the water comes out of the places in
her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back
and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays
sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her
do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She
used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them,
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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 Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: the public for a long time with all kinds of little schemes from
selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke
Smith presidential campaign buttons. I'd like, myself, to hedge a bet
or two in the graft game if I could do it without actually banging the
cymbalines in the Salvation Army or teaching a bible class by the
Bertillon system.
"'What'll we do?' says Andy. 'Give free grub to the poor or send a
couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?'
"'Neither,' says I. 'We've got too much money to be implicated in
plain charity; and we haven't got enough to make restitution. So,
we'll look about for something that's about half way between the two.'
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