| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Who thunders to his captives blood and death,
I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth,
Their weapons like to lightning came and went,
Our soldiers',--like the night-owl's lazy flight,
Or like an idle thrasher with a flail--
Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends.
I cheer'd them up with justice of our cause,
With promise of high pay and great rewards,
But all in vain; they had no heart to fight,
And we in them no hope to win the day;
So that we fled: the king unto the queen;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: grinned to himself, and gave out ambiguous interviews. It helped
the game, and he grinned again, as he meditated that Wall Street
would sure have to go some before it trimmed him.
They were prepared for him to play, and, when heavy buying of
Ward Valley began, it was quickly decided that he was the
operator. Financial gossip buzzed and hummed. He was after the
Guggenhammers once more. The story of Ophir was told over again
and sensationalized until even Daylight scarcely recognized it.
Still, it was all grist to his mill. The stock gamblers were
clearly befooled. Each day he increased his buying, and so eager
were the sellers that Ward Valley rose but slowly. "It sure
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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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: presently condensed and reacted in a volume on the coldest persons
present, and excited them. At the most animated moment of this
intoxicating party, in a corner of a gilded salon where certain
bankers, ambassadors, and the immoral old English earl, Lord Dudley,
were playing cards, Madame Felix de Vandenesse was irresistibly drawn
to converse with Raoul Nathan. Possibly she yielded to that ball-
intoxication which sometimes wrings avowals from the most discreet.
At sight of such a fete, and the splendors of a world in which he had
never before appeared, Nathan was stirred to the soul by fresh
ambition. Seeing Rastignac, whose younger brother had just been made
bishop at twenty-seven years of age, and whose brother-in-law, Martial
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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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: But yet because true reason and nature of things
Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now
I disentangle how there still exist
Bodies of solid, everlasting frame-
The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach,
Whence all creation around us came to be.
First since we know a twofold nature exists,
Of things, both twain and utterly unlike-
Body, and place in which an things go on-
Then each must be both for and through itself,
And all unmixed: where'er be empty space,
Of The Nature of Things |
