| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: village school; and though, when he left, his mother paid the village
apothecary to read learned books with him at night on history and science,
he had not retained much of them. As a rule he lived in the world
immediately about him, and let the things of the moment impinge on him, and
fall off again as they would, without much reflection. But tonight on the
kopje he fell to thinking, and his thoughts shaped themselves into
connected chains.
He wondered first whether his mother would ever get the letter he had
posted the week before, and whether it would be brought to her cottage or
she would go to the post office to fetch it. And then, he fell to thinking
of the little English village where he had been born, and where he had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: but I reckon maybe we had."
"What notion?" Tom says.
"To rob the others."
"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped
to get it?"
"Cert'nly."
It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest,
low-downest thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said
it warn't unusual in the profession. Said when a person
was in that line of business he'd got to look out for his
own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for him.
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