| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: where they had left her.
While it remained unworked, the mine had been a safe enough
place of refuge, secure from all search or pursuit. But now,
circumstances being altered, it became difficult to conceal this
lurking-place, and it might reasonably be hoped they were gone,
and that nothing for the future was to be dreaded from them.
James Starr, however, could not feel sure about it;
neither could Harry be satisfied on the subject, often repeating,
"Nell has clearly been mixed up with all this secret business.
If she had nothing more to fear, why should she keep silence?
It cannot be doubted that she is happy with us. She likes us all--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: succeeded in interesting her, which was more than we did."
"What chance had we?" rejoined Mrs. Ballinger. "Mrs. Roby
monopolised her from the first. And THAT, I've no doubt, was her
purpose--to give Osric Dane a false impression of her own
standing in the Club. She would hesitate at nothing to attract
attention: we all know how she took in poor Professor Foreland."
"She actually makes him give bridge-teas every Thursday," Mrs.
Leveret piped up.
Laura Glyde struck her hands together. "Why, this is Thursday,
and it's THERE she's gone, of course; and taken Osric with her!"
"And they're shrieking over us at this moment," said Mrs.
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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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: is there any cure against the thought. Be it so, then, even as you
will; though power is less than weakness, power shall you have; and
though the thought is colder than winter, yet shall you think it to
an end."
So the King's daughter sat in her vaulted chamber in the masoned
house, and she thought upon the thought. Nine years she sat; and
the sea beat upon the terrace, and the gulls cried about the
turrets, and wind crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years
she came not abroad, nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's
sky. Nine years she sat and looked neither to the right nor to the
left, nor heard speech of any one, but thought upon the thought of
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: without events; development, whose only moving force seems to be the
calendar, and tiresome by the constant reiteration of the same tensions
and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves periodically,
only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution;
pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
world's saviours, who, in their "laisser aller," recall the Day of
Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks
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