The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: before. There was no sound from within. Cautiously he raised
himself to the sill, and a moment later dropped into the inky
darkness of the interior.
With groping hands he felt about the room--it was unoccupied.
Then he passed to the door at the far end. Cautiously
he opened it until a narrow crack gave him a view of the
dimly lighted chamber beyond. Within all seemed asleep. The
mucker pushed the door still further open and stepped
within--so must he search every hut within the village until
he had found those he sought?
They were not there, and on silent feet that disturbed not
 The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: wide-spread envy doubles the chances of common minds who excite
neither envy nor suspicion, who make their way like moles, and, fools
though they be, find themselves gazetted in the "Moniteur," for three
or four places, while men of talent are still struggling at the door
to keep each other out.
The underhand enmity of these pretended friends, which Florine would
have scented with the innate faculty of a courtesan to get at truth
amid a thousand misleading circumstances, was by no means Raoul's
greatest danger. His partners, Massol the lawyer, and du Tillet the
banker, had intended from the first to harness his ardor to the
chariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he was
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