| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: this great effort she could neglect any apparent aid to advancement.
It is my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass
the deportment of this remarkable woman I am obliged to express
things rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance,
when I say that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement
in the person of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards
remembered that a prudent archer has always a second bowstring.
Eugenia was a woman of finely-mingled motive, and her intentions
were never sensibly gross. She had a sort of aesthetic ideal
for Clifford which seemed to her a disinterested reason for
taking him in hand. It was very well for a fresh-colored young
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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 Human Drift by Jack London: chronically crippled by the continual play of knuckle-dusters and
belaying pins. Once, and once only, were men flogged or ironed--a
very fair average for the year 1834, for at that time flogging on
board merchant vessels was already well on the decline.
The difference between the sea-life then and now can be no better
epitomised than in Dana's description of the dress of the sailor
of his day:
"The trousers tight around the hips, and thence hanging long and
loose around the feet, a superabundance of checked shirt, a low-
crowned, well-varnished black hat, worn on the back of the head,
with half a fathom of black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and
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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 Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: from within, and there stood my Lady Aelueva, and she
said to me: "Sir Richard, will it please you enter your
Great Hall?" Then she wept, but we were alone.'
The knight was silent for a long time, his face turned
across the valley, smiling.
'Oh, well done!' said Una, and clapped her hands very
softly. 'She was sorry, and she said so.'
'Aye, she was sorry, and she said so,' said Sir Richard,
coming back with a little start. 'Very soon - but he said it
was two full hours later - De Aquila rode to the door,
with his shield new scoured (Hugh had cleansed it), and
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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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: alters with the age and growth. Now all is of a grass-like hue,
infinitely dainty; next the rib grows golden, the fronds remaining
green as ferns; and then, as the trunk continues to mount and to
assume its final hue of grey, the fans put on manlier and more
decided depths of verdure, stand out dark upon the distance,
glisten against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in the
assault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku, all these
hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. The
trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there
interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for
storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the
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