| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: the door, and whose eyes seemed stupefied by the intensity of his
attention to the murmurs of the street and night.
Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to
play loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of
feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.
Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house
of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a
young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at
that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army
were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The
requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And am this city's benefactor!
Since then, alas! both thing and name,
Shoddy across the ocean came -
Shoddy that can the eye bewilder
And makes me blush to meet a builder!
Had this good house, in frame or fixture,
Been tempered by the least admixture
Of that discreditable shoddy,
Should we to-day compound our toddy,
Or gaily marry song and laughter
Below its sempiternal rafter?
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