| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: turned at least to the war-ships, where it seems he was rebuffed;
thence he fled into the arms of the wrecker gang, where he was
unhappily more successful. The government of Washington had
presented to the Samoan king the wrecks of the TRENTON and the
VANDALIA; an American syndicate had been formed to break them up;
an experienced gang was in consequence settled in Apia and the
report of submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears
of residents. From these artificers the president obtained a
supply of dynamite, the needful mechanism, and the loan of a
mechanic; the gaol was mined, and the Manono people in Vaiusu were
advertised of the fact in a letter signed by Laupepa. Partly by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: girl named Annette, who was nineteen years old and as much a slave to
Rigou as her mistress, and whose wages were thirty francs a year.
Tall, thin, and withered, Madame Rigou, a woman with a yellow face red
about the cheek-bones, her head always wrapped in a colored
handkerchief, and wearing the same dress all the year round, did not
leave the house for two hours in a month's time, but kept herself in
exercise by doing the hard work of a devoted servant. The keenest
observer could not have found a trace of the fine figure, the Rubens
coloring, the splendid lines, the superb teeth, the virginal eyes
which first drew the attention of the Abbe Niseron to the young girl.
The birth of her only daughter, Madame Soudry, Jr., had blighted her
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