| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon waking to feverish and
weak activity. She dawdled about the lasses at their work, looking
stupidly on; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and
desisted when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of
animation and drop them without a struggle. Her common appearance was
of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when
she overhauled, one after another, the worthless and touching mementoes
of her youth, she might have been seeking the clue to that lost thought.
During this period, she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house
lasses, giving them with a manner of regret that embarrassed the
recipients.
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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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: way,--dull, empty, foolish conversations in petty local matters, or
personalities of no interest to her. She was often surprised at the
heat displayed in discussions which concerned no feeling or sentiment
--to her the essence of existence, the soul of life.
Often she was seen with fixed eyes, mentally absorbed, thinking no
doubt of the days of her youthful ignorance spent in that chamber full
of harmonies now forever passed away. She felt a horrible repugnance
against dropping into the gulf of pettiness in which the women among
whom she lived were floundering. This repugnance, stamped on her
forehead, on her lips, and ill-disguised, was taken for the insolence
of a parvenue. Madame Graslin began to observe on all faces a certain
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