| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: everybody's status by figures, incomes, or solid acres,--a phrase of
their lexicon.
Turn to the right, and put the same question to that other man, who
belongs to the species Lounger. "Madame Firmiani?" he says; "yes, yes,
I know her well; I go to her parties; receives Wednesdays; highly
creditable house."--Madame Firmiani is metamorphosed into a house! but
the house is not a pile of stones architecturally superposed, of
course not, the word presents in Lounger's language an indescribable
idiom.--Here the Lounger, a spare man with an agreeable smile, a sayer
of pretty nothings with more acquired cleverness than native wit,
stoops to your ear and adds, with a shrewd glance: "I have never seen
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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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: case from the local Commissariats and Departments attached
to the local Soviet. Representatives of the Central Statistical
Office and its local organs had a right to be present at the
meeting of these committees of three, or "Troikas," but had
not the right to vote. An organization or a factory requiring
labor, was to apply to the Labor Department of the local
Soviet. This Department was supposed to do its best to
satisfy demands upon it by voluntary methods first. If these
proved insufficient they were to apply to the local "Troika,"
or Labor Conscription Committee. If this found that its
resources also were insufficient, it was to refer back the
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