| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: none of her movements.
"Well, receive him," continued the functionary of the Revolution, "but
do not keep him under your roof later than seven o'clock in the
morning. To-morrow, at eight, I shall be at your door with a
denunciation."
She looked at him with a stupid air that might have made a tiger
pitiful.
"I will prove," he continued in a kindly voice, "the falsity of the
denunciation, by making a careful search of the premises; and the
nature of my report will protect you in future from all suspicions. I
will speak of your patriotic gifts, your civic virtues, and that will
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: forgive me now for all my willfulness and wrongdoing. I will do
my best never to do it again, and Oh! I do so want to be good so
that you may feel proud of me some day in the near future.''
A month or so later this friend was called up by the director of
a religious home for girls in Chicago, who stated that Inez had
just come to them and had been taken seriously ill. Advice was
given to discount her symptoms, but she was sent once more to a
hospital. Here she produced more blood as if from a pulmonary
hemorrhage and more symptoms were recounted, but the doctors
decided after careful examination that she was falsifying. Her
illness ceased the minute she was told to leave the hospital.
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: a bottle of the best rum, or what you please, and you will see the
virtue of the thing."
"Very well, Kanaka," says the boatswain. "I will try; but if you
are having your fun out of me, I will take my fun out of you with a
belaying pin."
So the whaler-man went off up the avenue; and Keawe stood and
waited. It was near the same spot where Kokua had waited the night
before; but Keawe was more resolved, and never faltered in his
purpose; only his soul was bitter with despair.
It seemed a long time he had to wait before he heard a voice
singing in the darkness of the avenue. He knew the voice to be the
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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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: which would make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is
not moral!
Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled
from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and
passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have
calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see
the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her
attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her;
amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an
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