| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: to do with that."
Then she tells me. The night of the day after
we camped there, her and Miss Hampton was out
fur a walk. We didn't have any show that night.
They passed right by our camp, and they seen us
there by the fire, all three of us. But they was in
the road in the dark, and we was all in the light, so
none of the three of us seen them. Miss Hampton
was kind of scared of us, first glance, fur she gasped
and grabbed holt of Martha's arm all of a sudden
so tight she pinched it. Which it was very natcheral
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: world; a region whose climate is eternally influenced by some fresh
law (after which he vainly guesses with a sigh at his own
ignorance), which renders life impossible to one species, possible
to another. And it is a still more solemn thought to him, that it
was not always so; that aeons and ages back, that rock which he
passed a thousand feet below was fringed, not as now with fern and
blue bugle, and white bramble-flowers, but perhaps with the alp-
rose and the "gemsen-kraut" of Mont Blanc, at least with Alpine
Saxifrages which have now retreated a thousand feet up the mountain
side, and with the blue Snow-Gentian, and the Canadian Sedum, which
have all but vanished out of the British Isles. And what is it
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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 Parmenides by Plato: greatness or smallness inhering in them in addition to their own proper
nature. Let us begin by assuming smallness to be inherent in one: in this
case the inherence is either in the whole or in a part. If the first,
smallness is either coextensive with the whole one, or contains the whole,
and, if coextensive with the one, is equal to the one, or if containing the
one will be greater than the one. But smallness thus performs the function
of equality or of greatness, which is impossible. Again, if the inherence
be in a part, the same contradiction follows: smallness will be equal to
the part or greater than the part; therefore smallness will not inhere in
anything, and except the idea of smallness there will be nothing small.
Neither will greatness; for greatness will have a greater;--and there will
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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 Europeans by Henry James: Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton
was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero;
but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly
never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great
discretion in all things--beginning with his estimate of himself.
He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world
as he was supposed to be in local circles; but it must be added
that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach
of which he had never quite given local circles the measure.
He was addicted to taking the humorous view of things,
and he had discovered that even in the narrowest circles
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