| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: away near the krantz by the river, I saw three figures moving. And
afterwards--it might have been fancy--I thought I heard the cry again; but
since that, all has been still there."
...
Next day a navvy had returned to the railway works.
"Where have you been so long?" his comrades asked.
"He keeps looking over his shoulder," said one, "as though he thought he
should see something there."
"When he drank his grog today," said another, "he let it fall, and looked
round."
Next day, a small old Bushman, and a Hottentot, in ragged yellow trousers,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "Not allowed!" she observed. "What has that got to do with it? I
don't understand you, Bab; you are totaly changed."
"I am suffering," I said. I was to.
Just then the maid brought me a folded note. Hannah was hanging up
my wraps, and did not see it. Jane's eyes fairly bulged.
"I hope you have saved the Cotillion for me," it said. And it was
signed. H----!
"Good gracious," Jane said breathlessly."Don't tell me he is here,
and that that's from him!"
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. Then I said, solemnly:
"He is here, Jane. He has followed me. I am going to dance the
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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 Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty
in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns
out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,
for it has already been everything else it could think of, since
those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now
as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She
calls it Abel.
Ten Years Later
They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in
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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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: with old oaken carvings of hideous faces, unknown birds,
beasts, and fishes; and fruits and flowers which it would
perplex a naturalist to classify. There are also, in Aldersgate
Street, certain remains of what were once spacious and lordly
family mansions, but which have in latter days been subdivided
into several tenements. Here may often be found the family of
a petty tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing
among the relics of antiquated finery, in great, rambling, time-
stained apartments, with fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and
enormous marble fireplaces. The lanes and courts also contain
many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, but, like your
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