| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: cottages to the open country, to a farm and a low hill
corrugated with hard snow. In her loose nutria coat, seal
toque, virginal cheeks unmarked by lines of village jealousies,
she was as out of place on this dreary hillside as a scarlet
tanager on an ice-floe. She looked down on Gopher Prairie.
The snow, stretching without break from streets to devouring
prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretense of being a shelter.
The houses were black specks on a white sheet. Her heart
shivered with that still loneliness as her body shivered with
the wind.
She ran back into the huddle of streets, all the while
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: in every age, combine to pull down that which was immediately
above and to prey upon those that were below; his dulness, I
knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his days
were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let
the poor child shiver in the rain? The better days, indeed,
were coming, but the child would die before that. Alas, your
highness, in surely no ungenerous impatience I enrolled
myself among the enemies of this unjust and doomed society;
in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fires of my
philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an irrevocable oath.
'That oath is all my history. To give freedom to posterity I
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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 Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: the one in the wrong.
"I wish I had an acre for every good thrashing I got when I was a
boy," he commented drily. "But in those days a father who
demanded obedience wasn't considered a monster."
"If you only loved him, I wouldn't care," sobbed Rose. "I could
stand it better to have you hit him in anger, but you're so hard,
so cruel. You plan it all out so--how can you?"
Nevertheless, with a last convulsive hug and a broken "Mother
can't help it, darling," she put Billy on his feet, her tormented
heart wrung with bitterness as Martin took the clinging child
from her and carried him away, hysterical and resisting.
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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 The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and
the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll
still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it
seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate,
gave a night's respite. But things must be brought to an issue
forthwith.
By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the
Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed
and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again
for her last st,ruggle with him. He had tricked her this time,
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