| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: listened to the edict fulminated against his lodgers by the sergeant
of the watch. She mechanically looked up at the window of the room
inhabited by the old man, and shivered with horror as she suddenly
caught sight of the gloomy, melancholy face, and the piercing eye that
so affected her husband, accustomed as he was to dealing with
criminals.
At that period, great and small, priests and laymen, all trembled
before the idea of any supernatural power. The word "magic" was as
powerful as leprosy to root up feelings, break social ties, and freeze
piety in the most generous soul. It suddenly struck the constable's
wife that she had never, in fact, seen either of her lodgers
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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 Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: office and a special correspondent in Pasadena, the answer was
that they had heard nothing about the cyclone! And next morning I
made a careful search of their columns. On the front page I read:
"Fourth Blizzard of Season Raging in East"; also: "Another
Earthquake in Guatemala". But not a line about the Pasadena
cyclone That there was plenty of space in that issue, you may
judge from the fact that there were twenty headlines like the
following--many of them representing full page and half page
illustrated "write-ups":
Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The Bright
Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California: Southland's Arms
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