| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: if the earth had not been a bountiful mother ? But to pass by the mighty
Elephant, which the Earth breeds and nourisheth, and descend to the
least of creatures, how doth the earth afford us a doctrinal example in
the little Pismire, who in the summer provides and lays up her winter
provision, and teaches man to do the like! The earth feeds and carries
those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your
patience, what might not I say in commendations of the earth? That
puts limits to the proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves
both man and beast, that it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth
those that venture upon the sea, and are there shipwrecked, drowned,
and left to feed Haddocks; when we that are so wise as to keep
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
sympathy. If they had not been bound by nature's ties, they would
instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
which is so rarely to be met in this life. Appointed sub-lieutenant of
dragoons, at the age of eighteen, the young Comte de Dey had obeyed
the point of honor of the period by following the princes of the blood
in their emigration.
Thus Madame de Dey, noble, rich, and the mother of an emigre, could
not be unaware of the dangers of her cruel situation. Having no other
desire than to preserve a fortune for her son, she renounced the
happiness of emigrating with him; and when she read the vigorous laws
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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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: "This is the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must
be mistaken as to Mrs. Drayton Deane's having had any unmentioned,
and still less any unmentionable, knowledge of Hugh Vereker. She'd
certainly have wished it - should it have borne on his literary
character - to he used."
"It was used. She used it herself. She told me with her own lips
that she 'lived' on it."
I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew so pale
that I felt as if I had struck him. "Ah, 'lived' - !" he
murmured, turning short away from me.
My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I beg
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: one man in the English settlements that you can understand, you
wade through awful swarms that talk something you can't make head
nor tail of. You see, every country on earth has been overlaid so
often, in the course of a billion years, with different kinds of
people and different sorts of languages, that this sort of mongrel
business was bound to be the result in heaven."
"Sandy," says I, "did you see a good many of the great people
history tells about?"
"Yes - plenty. I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished people."
"Do the kings rank just as they did below?"
"No; a body can't bring his rank up here with him. Divine right is
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