| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: never had that stern father spoken his name in such a tone.
"Listen, my son," the dying man went on. "I am a great sinner.
All my life long, however, I have thought of my death. I was once
the friend of the great Pope Julius II.; and that illustrious
Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitability of my senses
should entangle me in mortal sin between the moment of my death
and the time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave me a flask
that contains a little of the holy water that once issued from
the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret of this
squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am
permitted to reveal the mystery in articulo mortis to my son. You
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty - there was
no doubt about the matter, she was docility itself - and once on
the other bank, where the road begins to mount through pine-woods,
I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking
spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for
perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet.
Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I
am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my
conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and
looked her all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were
trembling and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she
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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 The Call of the Wild by Jack London: sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back,
bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a
friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to
investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and
there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He
whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will
and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lick
Buck's face with his warm wet tongue.
Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck
confidently selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort
proceeded to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: who came with me so foully that the indignant old fellow left, he
cursed me for a few minutes and calmed down.
Then he told his wife to fetch out "The Book" from a hole in the
wall. She brought out a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a
petticoat, of old sheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all numbered
and covered with fine cramped writing. McIntosh ploughed his hand
through the rubbish and stirred it up lovingly.
"This," he said, "is my work--the Book of McIntosh Jellaludin,
showing what he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and
others; being also an account of the life and sins and death of
Mother Maturin. What Mirza Murad Ali Beg's book is to all other
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