| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: darkness, finally finding it where it had slid, some twenty feet
ahead. Again we dashed forward.
A light appeared ahead in the distance, dim but unmistakable
--the light of the urns in the cavern for which we were headed.
Suddenly Desiree faltered and would have fallen but for our
supporting arms.
"Courage!" I breathed. "We are near the end."
She stopped short and sank to the ground.
"It is useless," she gasped. "I hurt my ankle when I fell.
I can go no farther. Leave me!"
Harry and I with one impulse stooped over to pick her up, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: beginning to be familiar with this kind of exercise.
This well, or abyss, was a narrow cleft in the mass of the granite,
called by geologists a 'fault,' and caused by the unequal cooling of
the globe of the earth. If it had at one time been a passage for
eruptive matter thrown out by Snæfell, I still could not understand
why no trace was left of its passage. We kept going down a kind of
winding staircase, which seemed almost to have been made by the hand
of man.
Every quarter of an hour we were obliged to halt, to take a little
necessary repose and restore the action of our limbs. We then sat
down upon a fragment of rock, and we talked as we ate and drank from
 Journey to the Center of the Earth |