| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: parties; and the nearer it drew towards election-day, the more
prominence was given, in the public meetings, to the illustration
and discussion of the subject. Our State went for Lincoln by a
majority of 2763 (as you will find by consulting the "Tribune
Almanac"), and Mr. Wrangle was elected to Congress, having received
a hundred and forty-two more votes than his opponent. Mr. Tumbrill
has always attributed his defeat to his want of courage in not
taking up at once the glove which Selina Whiston threw down.
I think I have said enough to make it clear how the State of
Atlantic came to be the first to grant equal civil and political
rights to women. When the Legislature of 1860-'61 met at Gaston,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: utterly unlike mine." She drew a long breath. "When my own life feels
small, and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush together, and see it in
a picture, in an instant, a multitude of disconnected unlike phases of
human life--a mediaeval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet
orchard, and looking up from the grass at his feet to the heavy fruit-
trees; little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea-beach; a Hindoo
philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking, so
that in the thought of God he may lose himself; a troop of Bacchanalians
dressed in white, with crowns of vine-leaves, dancing along the Roman
streets; a martyr on the night of his death looking through the narrow
window to the sky, and feeling that already he has the wings that shall
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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 Message by Honore de Balzac: detail of youth in her face. In character she seemed to me to
resemble the Comtesse de Lignolles and the Marquise de B----, two
feminine types always fresh in the memory of any young man who
has read Louvet's romance.
In a moment I saw how things stood, and took a diplomatic course
that would have done credit to an old ambassador. For once, and
perhaps for the only time in my life, I used tact, and knew in
what the special skill of courtiers and men of the world
consists.
I have had so many battles to fight since those heedless days,
that they have left me no time to distil all the least actions of
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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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: The aim of all is but to nurse the life
With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age;
And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
That one for all, or all for one we gage;
As life for honour in fell battles' rage;
Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
The death of all, and all together lost.
So that in vent'ring ill we leave to be
The things we are, for that which we expect;
And this ambitious foul infirmity,
In having much, torments us with defect
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