| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: ranks of soldiers on parade.
The special service of the Sacred Heart was about to begin. The ladies
affiliated to that congregation were in front near the choir, so the
Count and his son made their way to that part of the nave, and stood
leaning against one of the columns where there was least light, whence
they could command a view of this mass of faces, looking like a meadow
full of flowers. Suddenly, close to young Granville, a voice, sweeter
than it seemed possible to ascribe to a human being, broke into song,
like the first nightingale when winter is past. Though it mingled with
the voices of a thousand other women and the notes of the organ, that
voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and
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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 Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: wind. Over and over it turned him and upward and downward it
carried him, but after each new sally of the element he was
brought nearer to the ground. The freaks of cyclonic storms are
the rule of cyclonic storms, demolish giant trees, and in the
same gust they transport frail infants for miles and deposit them
unharmed in their wake.
And so it was with Gahan of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be
dashed to destruction he presently found himself deposited gently
upon the soft, ochre moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse
off for his harrowing adventure than in the possession of a
slight swelling upon his forehead where the metal hook had struck
 The Chessmen of Mars |