| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: adversary to venture an attack. Thus with the least cost to yourself,
you will best be able to catch your enemy tripping.
[1] Or, "sleight of hand"; and for {kleptein} = escamoter see "Anab."
IV. vi. 11, 15; V. vi. 9.
But to avoid suspicion of seeming to prescribe impossible feats, I
will set down, in so many words, the procedure in certain crucial
instances.
The best safeguard against failure in any attempt to enforce pursuit
or conduct a retreat lies in a thorough knowledge of your horse's
powers.[2] But how is this experience to be got? Simply by paying
attention to their behaviour in the peaceable manouvres of the sham
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: yesterday afternoon to Bridge of Allan, and have been very happy
ever since, as every place is sanctified by the eighth sense,
Memory. I walked up here this morning (three miles, TU-DIEU! a
good stretch for me), and passed one of my favourite places in the
world, and one that I very much affect in spirit when the body is
tied down and brought immovably to anchor on a sickbed. It is a
meadow and bank on a corner on the river, and is connected in my
mind inseparably with Virgil's ECLOGUES. HIC CORULIS MISTOS INTER
CONSEDIMUS ULMOS, or something very like that, the passage begins
(only I know my short-winded Latinity must have come to grief over
even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is just such a
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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 The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something
in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted
by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be,
that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment.
I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so,
and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul
in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies
and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with
sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little
unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes
about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would
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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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: made up his mind that they were to make a landing there, when--"
"Stand by for stays," came the raucous bark of the Captain, who
had taken on the heel. The sails slatted furiously as the
schooner came about. Then the "Bertha Millner" caught the wind
again and lay over quietly and contentedly to her work. The next
tack brought the schooner close under Alcatraz. The sea became
heavier, the breeze grew stiff and smelled of the outside ocean.
Out beyond them to westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak vista
of gray-green water roughened with white-caps.
"Stand by for stays."
Once again as the rudder went hard over, the "Bertha Millner"
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