| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: spring water has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I
refused to change. It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van
Alstyne."
"Oh, of course," he said, "if it was a matter of principle--" He
stopped, and then something seemed to strike him. "I say," he
said; "about the doctor--that's all right, you know; lots of
doctors and all that. But for heaven's sake, Minnie, don't
discharge the cook."
Now that was queer, for it had been running in my head all
morning that in the slack season it would be cheaper to get a
good woman instead of the chef and let Tillie, the diet cook,
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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 Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: just married and beaming with happiness, saw an answering beam in
the older man's face. He broke off in the midst of a sentence
and stared at him.
"Don't give me away until I tell you to, Ned," he said, "but I
don't know but I am going to follow your example."
"My example?"
"Yes, going to get married."
The young man gasped. A look of surprise, of amusement, then of
generous sympathy came over his face. He grasped Lawton's hand.
"Who is she?"
"Oh, a woman I wanted more than anything in the world when I was
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: first sleep with a vague sort of apprehension that the last day was
at hand. The whole street was alive, and we could hear people
talking in their rooms, or crying to passers-by from their windows,
all around us. At last I made out what a man was saying in the
next room. It was a fire in Sachsenhausen, he said (Sachsenhausen
is the suburb on the other side of the Main), and he wound up with
one of the most tremendous falsehoods on record, 'HIER ALLES RUHT -
here all is still.' If it can be said to be still in an engine
factory, or in the stomach of a volcano when it is meditating an
eruption, he might have been justified in what he said, but not
otherwise. The tumult continued unabated for near an hour; but as
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good
cargo for my coming to England.
When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call
him), we agreed that after I arrived he should pretend to have
an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry
again when he would. He promised, and engaged to me to
correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me
as long as I lived; and that if he died before me, he would leave
sufficient to his mother to take care of me still, in the name of
asister, and he was in some respects careful of me, when he
heard of me; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the
Moll Flanders |
