| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: the poetry of love which beautifies everything; he saw them dirty
and faded, regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid
of honor, idle and vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it
were, on the things about us?
Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, that
terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To lose the
bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, is a keener
pang than that caused by the loss of known happiness, however
complete it may have been; for is not Hope better than Memory?
The thoughts into which our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a
shoreless sea, in which we may swim for a moment, but where our
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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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: burthens on their heads passing silently, and white remote houses
and ruins and deep gorges and precipices and ancient half-ruinous
bridges over unruly streams. And if there was rain there was also
the ending of rain, rainbows, and the piercing of clouds by the
sun's incandescence, and sunsets and the moon, first full, then new
and then growing full again as the holiday wore on.
They found tolerable accommodation at Cattaro and at Cettinje and at
a place halfway between them. It was only when they had secured a
guide and horses, and pushed on into the south-east of Montenegro
that they began to realize the real difficulties of their journey.
They aimed for a place called Podgoritza, which had a partially
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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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: like a black patch, and not a dozen feet from Kutka the ground
ended abruptly in the steep bank of the little river. Lying down
I could not see the river; I could only see the tops of the young
willows growing thickly on the nearer bank, and the twisting, as
it were gnawed away, edges of the opposite bank. At a distance
beyond the bank on the dark hillside the huts of the village in
which Savka lived lay huddling together like frightened young
partridges. Beyond the hill the afterglow of sunset still
lingered in the sky. One pale crimson streak was all that was
left, and even that began to be covered by little clouds as a
fire with ash.
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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 Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: "I am stunned," Lute answered. "I cannot understand it. She never did anything
like it in all her life. And all animals like you so--it's not because of
that. Why, she is a child's horse. I was only a little girl when I first rode
her, and to this day--"
"Well, this day she was everything but a child's horse," Chris broke in. "She
was a devil. She tried to scrape me off against the trees, and to batter my
brains out against the limbs. She tried all the lowest and narrowest places
she could find. You should have seen her squeeze through. And did you see
those bucks?"
Lute nodded.
"Regular bucking-bronco proposition."
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