| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: invariable answer that she was perfectly well. But when the spring
opened she went round to visit her forests, farms, and beautiful
meadows with a childlike joy and delight which betrayed to those who
knew her best a sad foreboding.
Finding himself obliged to build a small cemented wall between the dam
of the Gabou and the park of Montegnac along the base of the hill
called especially La Correze, Gerard took up the idea of enclosing the
whole forest and thus uniting it with the park. Madame Graslin agreed
to this, and appointed thirty thousand francs a year to this work,
which would take seven years to accomplish and would then withdraw
that fine forest from the rights exercised by government over the non-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Mirifico," on the mystic word "Schemhamphorash"--that hidden name of
God, which whosoever can pronounce aright is, for the moment, lord
of nature and of all daemons.
Amulets, too, and talismans; the faith in them was exceeding
ancient. Solomon had his seal, by which he commanded all daemons;
and there is a whole literature of curious nonsense, which you may
read if you will, about the Abraxas and other talismans of the
Gnostics in Syria; and another, of the secret virtues which were
supposed to reside in gems: especially in the old Roman and Greek
gems, carved into intaglios with figures of heathen gods and
goddesses. Lapidaria, or lists of these gems and their magical
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