| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: (He was three feet from Gunch.)
"That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh
notice in the paper the way the New York Assembly stood up to the Reds?"
"You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day."
"Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold."
"Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night, out on
the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid," Babbitt turned to Finkelstein, the buyer, "got
something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an electric
cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--"
"Good hunch!" said Finkelstein, while even the learned Professor Pumphrey, a
bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: After this, of her own movement, she never spoke of Gordon,
and Bernard made up his mind that she had promised her mother
to accept him if he should repeat his proposal, and that as her
heart was not in the matter she preferred to drop a veil over
the prospect. "She is going to marry him for his money," he said,
"because her mother has brought out the advantages of the thing.
Mrs. Vivian's persuasive powers have carried the day,
and the girl has made herself believe that it does n't matter
that she does n't love him. Perhaps it does n't--to her;
it 's hard, in such a case, to put one's self in the woman's
point of view. But I should think it would matter, some day
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: capable, is at once the type and test of all great art. What the
artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul
and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is
expressive of the inward: in which form reveals. Of such modes of
existence there are not a few: youth and the arts preoccupied with
youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: at another we may
like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of
impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things
and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike,
and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours,
modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was
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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 King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: To sin's rebuke and my Creator's praise.
WARWICK.
What answers Clarence to his sovereign's will?
CLARENCE.
That he consents if Warwick yield consent,
For on thy fortune I repose myself.
WARWICK.
Why, then, though loath, yet I must be content.
We'll yoke together, like a double shadow
To Henry's body, and supply his place,--
I mean in bearing weight of government
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