| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting, packing,
or rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of cattle,
sheep. or swine, or the packing of any of their products, the carcasses
or products of which are to become subjects of interstate or foreign
commerce, shall make application to the Secretary of Agriculture for
inspection of said animals and their products....
Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be removed
by the owners from the pens containing animals which have been inspected
and found to be free from disease and fit for human food, and shall be
disposed of in accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations of
the state and municipality in which said rejected or condemned animals
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: an old man brought forward a chair for her. She dropped into it at
once.
"Hide! hide!" she exclaimed, looking up at him. "Seldom as we leave
the house, everything that we do is known, and every step is
watched----"
"What is it now?" asked another elderly woman, sitting by the fire.
"The man that has been prowling about the house yesterday and to-day,
followed me to-night----"
At those words all three dwellers in the wretched den looked in each
other's faces and did not try to dissimulate the profound dread that
they felt. The old priest was the least overcome, probably because he
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: and I was in my own bed in Liverpool, in the life of to-day.
"Only for a time I could not believe that all these vivid
moments had been no more than the substance of a dream.
"In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the sobering
reality of things about me. I bathed and dressed as it were by
habit, and as I shaved I argued why I of all men should leave the
woman I loved to go back to fantastic politics in the hard and
strenuous north. Even if Evesham did force the world back to war,
what was that to me? I was a man with the heart of a man, and why
should I feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the world
might go?
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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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: sure of finding Mr. Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could
scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these
unanticipated things.
Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at
the entrance lodge. "Where is Mr. Bessel?" he asked. "Do you know
that all the furniture is broken in Mr. Bessel's room?" The porter
said nothing, but, obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr. Bessel's
apartment to see the state of affairs. "This settles it," he said,
surveying the lunatic confusion. "I didn't know of this. Mr. Bessel's
gone off. He's mad!"
He then proceeded to tell Mr. Vincey that about half an hour
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