| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: than if we had 150 persons following on, as Mr. Winthrop says he had
the other day at Windsor Castle. . . . On our way [home] we met Lady
Byron with her pretty little carriage and ponies. She alighted and
we did the same, and had quite a pleasant little interview in the
dusty road.
Sunday, May 30th
Your father left town on Monday. . . . He did not return until the
27th, the morning of the Queen's Birthday Drawing-Room. On that
occasion I went dressed in white mourning. . . . It was a petticoat
of white crape flounced to the waist with the edges notched. A
train of white glace trimmed with a ruche of white crape. A wreath
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
close to us.
His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had fifteen hundred
francs a year in the funds. He had received an education gratis in a
Seminary, but had refused to enter the priesthood. He felt in himself
the fires of immense ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the
age of twenty, the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
law, working in an attorney's office, where he had risen to be
superior clerk. He had taken his doctor's degree in law, had mastered
the old and modern codes, and could hold his own with the most famous
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