| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: She made a gesture like wringing the hands.
"How will I can know?" she cried.
But I must find some means to know," said I. "I cannot continue to go
dovering round in the black night with two men's lives at my girdle!
Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard
to put myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have
fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it.
See, keep him here till two of the morning, and I care not. Try him
with that."
They spoke together once more in the Gaelic.
"He says he has James More my father's errand," said she. She was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray
to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because
 Second Inaugural Address |