| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: irony) that he had clearly for too many years neglected a real
gift. If he had but stayed at home he would have anticipated the
inventor of the sky-scraper. If he had but stayed at home he would
have discovered his genius in time really to start some new variety
of awful architectural hare and run it till it burrowed in a gold
mine. He was to remember these words, while the weeks elapsed, for
the small silver ring they had sounded over the queerest and
deepest of his own lately most disguised and most muffled
vibrations.
It had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight, it had
broken out with the oddest abruptness, this particular wanton
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: It is impossible that I shan't be able to find a way to your
heart, that I shan't be able to make you obey me. My emotion in
speaking to you proves that I appreciate your suffering, that I
suffer with you. It is in the name of my sincerity that I
implore you. You have admitted it--that you have not the right
to expose your wife to such miseries. But it is not only your
wife that you strike; you may attack in her your own children. I
exclude you for a moment from my thought--you and her. It is in
the name of these innocents that I implore you; it is the future,
it is the race that I defend. Listen to me, listen to me! Out
of the twenty households of which I spoke, only fifteen had
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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 Astoria by Washington Irving: up till a late hour, watching and listening for his return,
hoping he might bring them food. Midnight arrived, but Le Clerc
did not make his appearance, and they laid down once more
supperless to sleep, comforting themselves with the hopes that
their old beaver trap might furnish them with a breakfast.
At daybreak they hastened with famished eagerness to the trap.
They found in it the forepaw of a beaver, the sight of which
tantalized their hunger, and added to their dejection. They
resumed their journey with flagging spirits, but had not gone far
when they perceived Le Clerc approaching at a distance. They
hastened to meet him, in hopes of tidings of good cheer. He had
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire cried
to God -
'O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout.'
Out of Shakespeare's sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may
be, the secret of his love and make it their own; they look with
new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of
Chopin's nocturnes, or handled Greek things, or read the story of
the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was
like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate.
But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with
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