| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: for any such sum, fearing, they might say, to get themselves into
trouble. The Abbe Gabriel, who was travelling alone for the first
time, said, at each relay, in his dulcet voice:--
"Pray go faster, postilion."
"We ply the whip," replied an old postilion, "according to how the
traveller plies his finger and thumb."
The young abbe flung himself back into a corner of the carriage unable
to comprehend that answer. To occupy the time he began to study the
country through which he was passing, making several mental excursions
on foot among the hills through which the road winds between Bordeaux
and Lyon.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: the encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin
veneer of his smile.
"How impatient men are!" Lily reflected. "All Jack has to do to
get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry
him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and
advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance,
where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time."
As they drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of
family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There
was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic
way--he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a
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