| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: what a different sound! "You needn't 'say'--there's nothing to be
said. And yet you ought perhaps to know."
"Certainly I ought. But WHAT--up to now?"
"Why exactly what I told him. That I'd do anything for him."
"What do you mean by 'anything'?"
"Everything."
Mr. Mudge's immediate comment on this statement was to draw from
his pocket a crumpled paper containing the remains of half a pound
of "sundries." These sundries had figured conspicuously in his
prospective sketch of their tour, but it was only at the end of
three days that they had defined themselves unmistakeably as
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: schoolmasters, or their ghosts, asking whether I was cruelly beaten at
school? No; but then I did not learn anything at school. Dr
Johnson's schoolmaster presumably did care enough whether Sam learned
anything to beat him savagely enough to force him to lame his mind
--for Johnson's great mind _was_ lamed--by learning his lessons. None
of my schoolmasters really cared a rap (or perhaps it would be fairer
to them to say that their employers did not care a rap and therefore
did not give them the necessary caning powers) whether I learnt my
lessons or not, provided my father paid my schooling bill, the
collection of which was the real object of the school. Consequently I
did not learn my school lessons, having much more important ones in
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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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: rest, Gilbert had set up his loom in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap,
where he laboured assiduously six days of the week. His brothers,
appalled by his political opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in
the household, spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining
absorbed in the study of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The
gaunt weaver was dry-nurse at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him
dearly. Except when he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was
rarely seen to smile - as, indeed, there were few smilers in that
family. When his sister-in-law rallied him, and proposed that he should
get a wife and bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, "I have
no clearness of mind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: surface, allow the signs of very doubtful comfort to peep out in
every part of their home. If, here, the picture is too boldly
drawn, if you find it tedious in places, do not blame the
description, which is, indeed, part and parcel of my story; for
the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his two neighbors had a
great influence on the feelings and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner.
The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom there is a
foregone and profound horror of repairs and decoration, one of
the men who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a
business. In the vast chain of moral species, these people hold a
middle place between the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their
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