| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: be her equal. He could think of no words to say. The tears
overflowed his eyes and ran down upon his cheeks. She drew away
from him and held him a second at arm's length, looking at him,
and he saw that she, too, had been crying.
"I think," he said, "we are a couple of softies."
"No, no," she insisted. "I want to cry and want you to cry, too.
Oh, dear, I haven't a handkerchief."
"Here, take mine."
They wiped each other's eyes like two children and for a long
time sat in the deserted little Japanese pleasure house, their
arms about each other, talking, talking, talking.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Far, far down I saw a small brown blotch near the
bottom of the canon. It was the bear.
My second shot must have killed him, and so his
dead body, after hurling me to the path, had toppled
over into the abyss. I shivered at the thought of how
close I, too, must have been to going over with him.
It took us a long time to reach the carcass, and arduous
labor to remove the great pelt. But at last the thing was
accomplished, and we returned to camp dragging the
heavy trophy behind us.
Here we devoted another considerable period to
Pellucidar |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: fuel, together with forcible representations of amounts owing to the
baker, ending in an acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such
couples reveal their characters in picturesque language. As I
listened, I could make their lives mine, I felt their rags on my back,
I walked with their gaping shoes on my feet; their cravings, their
needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed into theirs.
It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot with them over the
foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers that made them call again and
again for payment.
To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than myself through
a kind of intoxication of the intellectual faculties, and to play this
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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 Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: reflected that the answers he must return would so incriminate himself
that he would be risking his own neck in the betrayal. He flung
himself down again with a curse and a groan, and thought no more of
the salvation that might lie for him that way.
The morning of that last day of May found him pale and limp and all
a-tremble. He rose betimes and dressed, but stirred not from his
chamber till in the garden under his window he heard his sister's
voice, and that of Diana Horton, joined anon by a man's deeper tones,
which he recognized with a start as Blake's. What did the baronet
here so early? Assuredly it must concern the impending duel. Richard
knew no mawkishness on the score of eavesdropping. He stole to his
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