| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: or in dawdling around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid
and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside
and straitened means, the seventh in Fairlyand--such had been
their program and their habit.
In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old--
plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck
loyally to the little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully
in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all
their mental and spiritual energies. But in their dream life they
obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be,
and howsoever the fancies might change. Aleck's fancies were not
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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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: mourning, she was an image of intelligent purpose, of the passion
of duty; but I asked myself whether any girl had ever had so
charming an instinct as that which permitted her to laugh out, as
for the joy of her difficulty, into the priggish old room. This
remarkable young woman could be earnest without being solemn, and
at moments when I ought doubtless to have cursed her obstinacy I
found myself watching the unstudied play of her eyebrows or the
recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness produced by the
parting of her lips. These aberrations, I hasten to add, didn't
prevent my learning soon enough why she had wished to see me. Her
reason for this was as distinct as her beauty: it was to make me
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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 An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: was going by it. He has broken his word and seized the
opportunity I was mad and credulous enough to tell him of. If I
had been in your place, Brandon, I would have strangled him or
thrown him under the wheels sooner than let him go. He has shown
himself in this as in everything else, a cheat, a conspirator, a
man of crooked ways, shifts, tricks, lying sophistries, heartless
selfishness, cruel cynicism--" He stopped to catch his breath,
and Sir Charles interposed a remonstrance.
"You are exciting yourself about nothing, Chester. They are in a
Pullman, with her maid and plenty of people; and she expressly
gave him leave to go with her. He asked her the question flatly
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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 The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O'er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger on the meadow
Traced a winding pathway for it,
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