| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: ***
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The Mayflower Compact
November 11, 1620 [This was November 21, old style calendar]
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: I guess she sleeps more than she thinks. She's gone somewhere
after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed.
He doesn't like to go to bed."
"Let us hope she will persuade him," observed Winterbourne.
"She will talk to him all she can; but he doesn't like her to talk
to him," said Miss Daisy, opening her fan. "She's going to try
to get Eugenio to talk to him. But he isn't afraid of Eugenio.
Eugenio's a splendid courier, but he can't make much impression
on Randolph! I don't believe he'll go to bed before eleven."
It appeared that Randolph's vigil was in fact triumphantly prolonged,
for Winterbourne strolled about with the young girl for some
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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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: head; and being taken with his drugs, and associated in the
minds of his auditors with stuffed sea-monsters, bottled
serpents, and his own visage, which is a title-page of
tribulation, they have spread great gloom through the minds of
the people of Little Britain. They shake their heads whenever
they go by Bow Church, and observe, that they never expected
any good to come of taking down that steeple, which in old
times told nothing but glad tidings, as the history of
Whittington and his Cat bears witness.
The rival oracle of Little Britain is a substantial
cheesemonger, who lives in a fragment of one of the old family
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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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: name. "Sir," he asked, "have you any identification?"
"Why, I think so, sonny," replied the old man, beginning to fumble
in his various pockets, and then, to the indescribable surprise of
his audience, to remove what they did not know, and could not have
imagined, were the souvenirs from his previous wanderings. When his
pockets were finally emptied, there was still no identification, but
instead, on the table before them, his interrogators saw the
following objects, namely, viz., and to wit: the bottle cap, the
chicken brains, the horse manure, a piece of grimy string, a cigar
butt, three pieces of chewed and flattened gum, a wing nut with
stripped threads, a rusty nail (bent in two places), part of a candy
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