| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "A message? To whom?"
"To the nearest police station." Muller told the story as it had
come to him.
The old man listened with an expression of such utter dazed terror
that the detective dropped all suspicion of him at once.
"What a terrible riddle," stammered the sick man as the other
finished the story.
"Would you answer me several questions?" asked Muller. The old
gentleman answered quickly, "Any one, every one."
"Miss Langen is rich?"
"She has a fortune of over three hundred thousand guldens, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by
lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt
himself a man of genius. The next day he bought colors, and canvases
of various dimensions; he piled up bread and cheese on his table, he
filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a provision of wood for his
stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He
hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures.
Again he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the
invitation. The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile
imitation of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth 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 Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: 'em.
Oh, plenty of good stories left in me yet, I assured
them. They must remember that I was only twenty-one,
after all, and at twenty-one one does not lose the sense
of humor.
And so I went back to my old desk, and wrote bright,
chatty letters home to Norah, and ground out very funny
stories with a punch in 'em, that the husband in the
insane asylum might be kept in comforts. With both hands
I hung on like grim death to that saving sense of humor,
resolved to make something of that miserable mess which
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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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: thought she would, killing potato-bugs in the kitchen-garden.
"What do you think, Joseph? Betsy has a beautiful set of little setters under
the piazza. Come quick, please! and see how we can get them out."
Joseph followed obediently. "Guess we'll have to let them stay there till they
crawl out," said Joseph; "Betsy'll take as good care of them there as
anywhere," whereupon the children looked the picture of misery and despair. At
this moment Rudolph emerged from the hole a mass of grass and dirt stains,
and both Mabel and Tattine thought he had been pretty plucky, though quite too
much preoccupied to tell him so, but Rudolph happily felt himself repaid for
hardships endured, in the delight of his discovery.
"It will be a month before they'll have sense enough to crawl out," he
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