| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: nearly kicked him down the stairs. Oh, yes, I'll keep out, right
enough; it isn't my affair.
By the way, after the quarantine and with the policeman locked in
the furnace room, a pearl necklace and a diamond bracelet were
stolen! Just ten of us to divide the suspicion! Upon my word,
Hal, it's the queerest situation I ever heard of. Which of us did
it? I make a guess that not a few of us are fools, but which is
the knave? The worst of it is, I am the only unaccredited member
of the household!
This is more scandal than I ever wrote in my life. Lay it to
circumscribed environment, and the lack of twenty miles over 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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: spent all her little savings. The transformation would have destroyed
the illusions of a mere dangler; but Andrea's caprice had become a
passion. Marianna, diverted of her picturesque poverty, and looking
like any ordinary woman of modest rank, inspired dreams of wedded
life.
He handed her into a hackney coach, and told her of the plans he had
in his head; and she approved of everything, happy in finding her
admirer more lofty, more generous, more disinterested than she had
dared to hope. He took her to a little apartment, where he had allowed
himself to remind her of his good offices by some of the elegant
trifles which have a charm for the most virtuous women.
Gambara |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: betook himself to the life-insurance company, where he learned the
intricacies of financial diplomacy. His aptitude and his memory were
prodigious; so that he was able to start on his peregrinations by the
15th of April, the date at which he usually opened the spring
campaign. Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the decline of
business, implored the ambitious Gaudissart not to desert the article
Paris, and seduced him, it was said, with large offers, to take their
commissions once more. The king of travellers was amenable to the
claims of his old friends, enforced as they were by the enormous
premiums offered to him.
* * * * *
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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 The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping
to draw Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one;
she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market,
worldly or other.
The pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had
evidently postponed. That was their thought and their decision.
So they put the subject away and went about their affairs
again with as good heart as they could.
Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury
all the time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter;
he was dead, he had died to schedule. He was dead more than four
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