| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: John Gorham
"Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot." --
"I'm over here to tell you what the moon already
May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;
I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,
And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so." --
"Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: air, Laurence applied to her every action. She met the emissaries and
conferred with them either at various points in the Nodesme forest, or
beyond the valley of the Cinq-Cygne, between the villages of Sezanne
and Brienne. Often she rode forty miles on a stretch with Gothard, and
returned to Cinq-Cygne without the least sign of weariness or
pre-occupation on her fair young face.
Some years earlier, Laurence had seen in the eyes of a little cow-boy,
then nine years old, the artless admiration which children feel for
everything that is out of the common way. She made him her page, and
taught him to groom a horse with the nicety and care of an Englishman.
She saw in the lad a desire to do well, a bright intelligence, and a
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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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: itself to gain a purchase. I was to appear before my judges in two
days' time, I made a final effort, and that night I bored through the
wood and felt that there was space beyond.
"Judge of my surprise when I applied my eye to the hole. I was in the
ceiling of a vault, heaps of gold were dimly visible in the faint
light. The Doge himself and one of the Ten stood below; I could hear
their voices and sufficient of their talk to know that this was the
Secret Treasury of the Republic, full of the gifts of Doges and
reserves of booty called the Tithe of Venice from the spoils of
military expeditions. I was saved!
"When the jailer came I proposed that he should help me to escape 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 Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: then, if Shanet was to lay her tangs ower ane of the ragamuffins'
heads, it would be, maybe, that the law would gi'ed a hard name."
One thing I have learned in life--never to speak sense when
nonsense will answer the purpose as well. I should have had
great difficulty to convince this practical and disinterested
admirer and vindicator of liberty, that arrests seldom or never
were to be seen in the streets of Edinburgh; and to satisfy her
of their justice and necessity would have been as difficult as to
convert her to the Protestant faith. I therefore assured her my
intention, if I could get a suitable habitation, was to remain in
the quarter where she at present dwelt. Janet gave three skips
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