| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: wait for the last quarter - he wouldn't stir till then; and he kept
his watch there with his eyes on it, reflecting while he held it
that this deliberate wait, a wait with an effort, which he
recognised, would serve perfectly for the attestation he desired to
make. It would prove his courage - unless indeed the latter might
most be proved by his budging at last from his place. What he
mainly felt now was that, since he hadn't originally scuttled, he
had his dignities - which had never in his life seemed so many -
all to preserve and to carry aloft. This was before him in truth
as a physical image, an image almost worthy of an age of greater
romance. That remark indeed glimmered for him only to glow the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Thoughts," whom he discovered by irrefragable processes of logic, and in
whom the philosophers believe privately, leaving Serapis to the women
and the sailors? All they had to do was to follow in his steps; to take
each of them a branch, of science or literature, or as many branches as
one man conveniently can; and working them out on the approved methods,
end in a few years, as Alexander did, by weeping on the utmost shore of
creation that there are no more worlds left to conquer.
Alas! the Muses are shy and wild; and though they will haunt, like
skylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny
hills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet
they are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and
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