| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: and elucidate this mystery for you."
"No," she replied, with a pout; "I wish it done now."
"You have not yet given me the right to obey you when you say, 'I wish
it.' "
"At this moment," she said, with an exhibition of coquetry of the sort
that drives men to despair, "I have a most violent desire to know this
secret. To-morrow it may be that I will not listen to you."
She smiled and we parted, she still as proud and as cruel, I as
ridiculous, as ever. She had the audacity to waltz with a young aide-
de-camp, and I was by turns angry, sulky, admiring, loving, and
jealous.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: instincts will resist you, and possibly be strengthened in the
resistance; but if you begin with its own holiest aspirations, and
suborn them for your own purposes, then there is hardly any limit to
the mischief you may do. Swear at a child, throw your boots at it,
send it flying from the room with a cuff or a kick; and the experience
will be as instructive to the child as a difficulty with a
short-tempered dog or a bull. Francis Place tells us that his father
always struck his children when he found one within his reach. The
effect on the young Places seems to have been simply to make them keep
out of their father's way, which was no doubt what he desired, as far
as he desired anything at all. Francis records the habit without
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