The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: "Well!" ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking
at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released
the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path.
"He doesn't like Europe," said the young girl. "He wants
to go back."
"To Schenectady, you mean?"
"Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn't got any boys here.
There is one boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher;
they won't let him play."
"And your brother hasn't any teacher?" Winterbourne inquired.
"Mother thought of getting him one, to travel round with us.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: with the rest of the village, for a trawling breeze which would not
come. Two o'clock was past, and still the red mainsails of the
skiffs hung motionless, and their images quivered head downwards in
the glassy swell,
"As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
It was neap-tide, too, and therefore nothing could be done among
the rocks. So, in despair, finding an old coast-guard friend
starting for his lobster-pots, I determined to save the old man's
arms, by rowing him up the shore; and then paddled homeward again,
under the high green northern wall, five hundred feet of cliff
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: place of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power.
Marrast, former editor-in-chief of the "National", became permanent
President of the Constitutional National Assembly, and the Secretaryship
of State, together with all the other important posts, devolved upon the
pure republicans.
The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself
as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed
in its own ideal; but it cam to power, not as it had dreamed under Louis
Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the
throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
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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 The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: they ceased. There were a few preparations to be made: the locks
to be gone over, Winters to be instructed as to renewed
vigilance, and then, after extinguishing the hall light, we
crept, in the darkness, through the front door, and into the
night.
I asked no questions. I felt that they were doing me honor in
making me one of the party, and I would show them I could be as
silent as they. We went across the fields, passing through the
woods that reached almost to the ruins of the stable, going over
stiles now and then, and sometimes stepping over low fences.
Once only somebody spoke, and then it was an emphatic bit of
The Circular Staircase |