| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: against the express advice of her educational superiors, who
implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect
had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions
at bay. The experience of the guardian's widow having been
precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's
career being present to all their minds, none of these
ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's
affairs; and she was accordingly left to her own resources.
A schoolmate from the Rocky Mountains, who was taking her
father and mother to Europe, had suggested Sophy's
accompanying them, and "going round" with her while her
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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 Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: hold than the rock of Capri. So it seemed at least to
Montriveau, who had taken part in that incredible exploit, while
the nuns in his eyes were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson
Lowe. To raise a hubbub over carrying off the Duchess would
cover them with confusion. They might as well set siege to the
town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a single soul to
tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore but two
aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that
should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent
which should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid
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