| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: turned and bent and struck back, evidently in the
power of a mighty force. Across the calm heavens
the murk of flying atmosphere--I have always maintained
that if you looked closely enough you could
SEE the wind--the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris
fleeing high in the air;--these faintly hinted at intense
movement rushing down through space. A roar of
sound filled the hollow of the sky. Occasionally it
intermitted, falling abruptly in volume like the
mysterious rare hushings of a rapid stream. Then the
familiar noises of a summer night became audible
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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 Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: wind, in the weather, in some swelling of the intestines, or else,
according to casuists, in the imperfections of our moral nature; the
fact being that the good man was simply worn out by the effort to
complete his mysterious picture. He was seated languidly in a large
oaken chair of vast dimensions covered with black leather; and without
changing his melancholy attitude he cast on Porbus the distant glance
of a man sunk in absolute dejection.
"Well, maitre," said Porbus, "was the distant ultra-marine, for which
you journeyed to Brussels, worthless? Are you unable to grind a new
white? Is the oil bad, or the brushes restive?"
"Alas!" cried the old man, "I thought for one moment that my work was
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