| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: one thing leading to another, she began, as the phrase is, to go out.
Bessie Alden, in this way, saw something of what she found
it a great satisfaction to call to herself English society.
She went to balls and danced, she went to dinners and talked,
she went to concerts and listened (at concerts Bessie
always listened), she went to exhibitions and wondered.
Her enjoyment was keen and her curiosity insatiable, and,
grateful in general for all her opportunities, she especially
prized the privilege of meeting certain celebrated persons--
authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen--of whose
renown she had been a humble and distant beholder, and who now,
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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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: "No," interposed the truncheon; "he has come to the place where
everybody must help themselves; and he will find it out, I hope,
before he has done with me."
"Oh, yes," said Grimes, "of course it's me. Did I ask to be
brought here into the prison? Did I ask to be set to sweep your
foul chimneys? Did I ask to have lighted straw put under me to
make me go up? Did I ask to stick fast in the very first chimney
of all, because it was so shamefully clogged up with soot? Did I
ask to stay here - I don't know how long - a hundred years, I do
believe, and never get my pipe, nor my beer, nor nothing fit for a
beast, let alone a man?"
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: scion of the Wiltshire Edmondshaws. He had died before they
married, and when her brother became a widower she had come to
his assistance and taken over much of the care of his youngest
daughter. But from the first her rather old-fashioned conception
of life had jarred with the suburban atmosphere, the High School
spirit and the memories of the light and little Mrs. Stanley,
whose family had been by any reckoning inconsiderable--to use the
kindliest term. Miss Stanley had determined from the outset to
have the warmest affection for her youngest niece and to be a
second mother in her life--a second and a better one; but she had
found much to battle with, and there was much in herself that Ann
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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 Crito by Plato: mother by our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objection to
urge against those of us who regulate marriage?' None, I should reply.
'Or against those of us who after birth regulate the nurture and education
of children, in which you also were trained? Were not the laws, which have
the charge of education, right in commanding your father to train you in
music and gymnastic?' Right, I should reply. 'Well then, since you were
brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the
first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before
you? And if this is true you are not on equal terms with us; nor can you
think that you have a right to do to us what we are doing to you. Would
you have any right to strike or revile or do any other evil to your father
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