| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: you know."
"It don't make any difference, Huck. If the body's hid
in the woods anywhere around the hound will find it.
If he's been murdered and buried, they wouldn't bury him deep,
it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over the spot he'll
scent him, sure. Huck, we're going to be celebrated,
sure as you're born!"
He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most
likely to get afire all over. That was the way this time.
In two minutes he had got it all ciphered out, and wasn't
only just going to find the corpse--no, he was going to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: shoulder a familiar slap. "We have earned a hundred gold crowns this
morning."
"I like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. And I know
not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows,"
replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. "I will go my rounds over by
Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out in
her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm!"
Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the unknown lord's
room to discover, if she could, some clue to this mysterious business.
Like some learned men who give themselves infinite pains to complicate
the clear and simple laws of nature, she had already invented a
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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 The Pupil by Henry James: the second, if he would only see it, he was really too absurd to
expect to be paid. Wasn't he paid enough without perpetual money -
wasn't he paid by the comfortable luxurious home he enjoyed with
them all, without a care, an anxiety, a solitary want? Wasn't he
sure of his position, and wasn't that everything to a young man
like him, quite unknown, with singularly little to show, the ground
of whose exorbitant pretensions it had never been easy to discover?
Wasn't he paid above all by the sweet relation he had established
with Morgan - quite ideal as from master to pupil - and by the
simple privilege of knowing and living with so amazingly gifted a
child; than whom really (and she meant literally what she said)
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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 The Death of the Lion by Henry James: proposition that there were certainly for every one such yearnings,
and even such faces; and I felt the crisis demand all my lucidity,
all my wisdom. "Oh yes, I'm a student of physiognomy. Do you
mean," I pursued, "that you've a passion for Mr. Paraday's books?"
"They've been everything to me and a little more beside - I know
them by heart. They've completely taken hold of me. There's no
author about whom I'm in such a state as I'm in about Neil
Paraday."
"Permit me to remark then," I presently returned, "that you're one
of the right sort."
"One of the enthusiasts? Of course I am!"
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