| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: that the year before Judy had felt compelled, like the rest of us,
to repair just a little the ravages of the climate. If she had
never done it one would not have looked twice at the absurdity when
she said of the powder-puff in the dressing-room, 'I have raised
that thing to the level of an immorality,' and sailed in to dance
with an uncompromising expression and a face uncompromised. I have
not spoken of her beauty; for one thing it was not always there, and
there were people who would deny it altogether, or whose considered
comment was, 'I wouldn't call her plain.' They, of course, were
people in whom she declined to be interested, but even for those of
us who could evoke some demonstration of her vivid self her face
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army
were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The
requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its
soldiers immediately, and it was not an unusual thing to see the roads
covered with recruits, who were still wearing citizen's dress. These
young men either preceded or lagged behind their respective
battalions, according to their power of enduring the fatigues of a
long march.
The young man of whom we are now speaking, was much in advance of a
column of recruits, known to be on its way from Cherbourg, which the
mayor of Carentan was awaiting hourly, in order to give them their
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: said he, "yu' caught me--if that's much to do when a man is half-witted
with dinner and sleep." He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious
expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary
entertainment, and palls. "Starved," he presently muttered. "We are kind
o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square
mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young--bet yu' I know who
she is!" he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at me
with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. "Sidney, Nebraska."
I nodded. This was not the lady's name--he could not recall her name--but
his geography of her was accurate.
One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had
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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 Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: This is like some of the Greek fables of Aristeas the Proconnesian, and
Cleomedes the Astypalaean; for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's
work-shop, and his friends, coming to look for him, found his body
vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they
met him traveling towards Croton. And that Cleomedes, being an
extraordinarily strong and gigantic man, but also wild and mad,
committed many desperate freaks; and at last, in a school-house,
striking a pillar that sustained the roof with his fist, broke it in the
middle, so that the house fell and destroyed the children in it; and
being pursued, he fled into a great chest, and, shutting to the lid,
held it so fast, that many men, with their united strength, could not
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