| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: new air into his lungs, and his first impulse had been to
invite him to dine the next day; but he was beginning
to understand why married men did not always immediately
yield to their first impulses.
"That young tutor is an interesting fellow: we had
some awfully good talk after dinner about books and
things," he threw out tentatively in the hansom.
May roused herself from one of the dreamy silences
into which he had read so many meanings before six
months of marriage had given him the key to them.
"The little Frenchman? Wasn't he dreadfully
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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 Riverman by Stewart Edward White: the shiftings of camp which, in the broader reaches of the lower
river, took place nearly every day. Men worked in soaked garments,
slept in damp blankets. Charlie cooked only by virtue of
persistence. The rivermen ate standing up, as close to the
sputtering, roaring fires as they could get. Always the work went
forward.
But there were other times when a golden sun rose each morning a
little earlier on a green and joyous world. The river ran blue.
Migratory birds fled busily northward--robins, flute-voiced blue-
birds, warblers of many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore
birds and ducks, the sweet-songed thrushes. Little tepid breezes
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