| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardly
restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point
out the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managed
to bridle my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes,
as opportunity offered.
My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper.
I painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,
studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day.
What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth,
I knew an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years,
and he told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: Useful In Democratic Communities
What was called the People in the most democratic republics
of antiquity, was very unlike what we designate by that term. In
Athens, all the citizens took part in public affairs; but there
were only 20,000 citizens to more than 350,000 inhabitants. All
the rest were slaves, and discharged the greater part of those
duties which belong at the present day to the lower or even to
the middle classes. Athens, then, with her universal suffrage,
was after all merely an aristocratic republic in which all the
nobles had an equal right to the government. The struggle
between the patricians and plebeians of Rome must be considered
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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 Menexenus by Plato: manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of
Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the
Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the
Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the
Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades,
which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and
is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony
of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the
description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: brightened into a cheerful content with life.
It was summer, and Quarterly-Meeting Day had arrived. There had
been rumors of the expected presence of "Friends from a distance,"
and not only those of the district, but most of the neighbors who
were not connected with the sect, attended. By the by-road,
through the woods, it was not more than half a mile from Friend
Mitchenor's cottage to the meeting-house, and Asenath, leaving her
father to be taken by Moses in his carriage, set out on foot. It
was a sparkling, breezy day, and the forest was full of life.
Squirrels chased each other along the branches of the oaks, and the
air was filled with fragrant odors of hickory-leaves, sweet fern,
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