| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: rats!
All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis;
it was so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to
think they might ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped,
as he was, what good did they do him--why should he ever have
allowed them to torment him? It had been the task of his recent
life to fight them down, to crush them out of him, never in his
life would he have suffered from them again, save that they had
caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he could protect
himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its old
ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But
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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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless
conspicuity of the sheet. I'm afraid I even watched the result of
my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.
When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found
myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, at
the great man's side, the result of his affability was a still
livelier desire that he shouldn't remain in ignorance of the
peculiar justice I had done him. It wasn't that he seemed to
thirst for justice; on the contrary I hadn't yet caught in his talk
the faintest grunt of a grudge - a note for which my young
experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more
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