| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In
the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at
the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent
military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain
Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the
laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the
French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army. This beauty
may have been among the secret causes of his prudence on fighting
days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his forehead,
or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful
Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: my father was on the losing side and had to fly for his life.
His estates were confiscated, his personal property seized, and there
we were, in Germany, strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers.
My brother and I were ten years old, and well educated for that age,
very studious, very fond of our books, and well grounded in the German,
French, Spanish, and English languages. Also, we were marvelous musical
prodigies--if you will allow me to say it, it being only the truth.
"Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon
followed him, and we were alone in the world. Our parents could have
made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had
many and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride,
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I went down the road,
from oak wood on to oak wood, driving Modestine; and he made me the
compliments of the new country in this tremulous high-pitched
salutation. And as all noises are lovely and natural at a
sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean hill
air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear,
and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river.
A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn
at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory.
PONT DE MONTVERT
ONE of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I
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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 The Human Drift by Jack London: water. We of the forecastle stood in sea-boots and oilskins. Our
hands were mittened, but our heads were bared in the presence of
the death we did not respect. Our ears stung and numbed and
whitened, and we yearned for the body to be gone. But the
interminable reading of the burial service went on. The captain
had mistaken his place, and while he read on without purpose we
froze our ears and resented this final hardship thrust upon us by
the helpless cadaver. As from the beginning, so to the end,
everything had gone wrong with the Bricklayer. Finally, the
captain's son, irritated beyond measure, jerked the book from the
palsied fingers of the old man and found the place. Again the
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