| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so
straight that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching
his eye. The latter in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at
him hard for a single instant and then, as if determined to that
course by some special vividness in it, dropped back into the salon
de lecture without addressing him. But the pilgrim from Milrose
permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind the clear
glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh
scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully
again as he placed it on his table. There it remained for some
minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: at my hole it was already taken! Such a thing had never happened
to me in three years, and it made me feel as if I were being
robbed under my own eyes. I said to myself, Confound it all!
confound it! And then my wife began to nag at me. 'Eh! What about
your Casque a meche! Get along, you drunkard! Are you satisfied,
you great fool?' I could say nothing, because it was all quite
true, and so I landed all the same near the spot and tried to
profit by what was left. Perhaps after all the fellow might catch
nothing, and go away.
"He was a little thin man, in white linen coat and waistcoat, and
with a large straw hat, and his wife, a fat woman who was doing
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: forgotten the aspect of the gable; here it was plastered,
there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle
still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap
picture of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by
this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty
families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving years.
The LAND had fallen; and with the LAND how much! Far in
the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the
sun looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted
place. And all over the world, in London, in Canada, in
New Zealand, fancy what a multitude of people could
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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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: and of course gave me several unmeaning cuts with the whip,
though I was fairly off. There had been a good deal of road-mending
going on, and even where the stones were not freshly laid down
there were a great many loose ones about. My driver was laughing and joking
with the lady and the children, and talking about the country
to the right and the left; but he never thought it worth while
to keep an eye on his horse or to drive on the smoothest parts of the road;
and so it easily happened that I got a stone in one of my fore feet.
Now, if Mr. Gordon or John, or in fact any good driver, had been there,
he would have seen that something was wrong before I had gone three paces.
Or even if it had been dark a practiced hand would have felt by the rein
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