| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: This cult is the mythological inheritance of the whole eastern
seaboard of Asia, from Siam to Kamtchatka. In Japan it is called
Shintoism. The word "Shinto" means literally "the way of the gods,"
and the letter of its name is a true exponent of the spirit of the
belief. For its scriptures are rather an itinerary of the gods'
lives than a guide to that road by which man himself may attain to
immortality. Thus with a certain fitness pilgrimages are its most
noticeable rites. One cannot journey anywhere in the heart of Japan
without meeting multitudes of these pilgrims, with their neat white
leggings and their mushroom-like hats, nor rest at night at any inn
that is not hung with countless little banners of the pilgrim
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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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: but she dressed herself properly."
"Out of my ten sous I have to pay for a lodging--"
"What's the matter with the lady you are nursing?"
"In the first place, she hasn't got any money; and then she has a
disease that scares the doctors. She owes me for sixty days' nursing;
that's why I keep on nursing her. The husband, who is a count,--she is
really a countess,--will no doubt pay me when she is dead; and so I've
lent her all I had. And now I haven't anything; all I did have has
gone to the pawn-brokers. She owes me forty-seven francs and twelve
sous, beside thirty francs for the nursing. She wants to kill herself
with charcoal. I tell her it ain't right; and, indeed, I've had to get
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