| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: mistress. But she would have none of it.
"I know better, sir. They don't come here to see me. Nora is the
attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite
out of joint," she laughed.
Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned.
"There's a heap of difference in noses," he murmured, apparently
apropos of nothing.
"That's another way of telling me that Nora's pug is the sweetest
thing you ever saw," she charged.
"I ain't half such a bad actor as some of the boys," he
deprecated.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: the crumbling of Russia: after France, was our turn coming? Should our
fields, too, be sown with bones, should our little towns among the
orchards and the corn fall in ashes amongst which broken hearts would
wander in search of some surviving stick of property? I had learned to
know that a long while before the war the eyes of the Hun, the bird of
prey, had been fixed upon us as a juicy morsel. He had written it, he had
said it. Since August, 1914, these Pan-German schemes had been leaking
out for all who chose to understand them. A great many did not so choose.
The Hun had wanted us and planned to get us, and now more than ever
before, because he intended that we should pay his war bills. Let him
once get by England, and his sword would cut through our fat, defenseless
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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 Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: of the ball given by the Austrian ambassador on the occasion of
Napoleon's marriage with the daughter of the Emperor Joseph II.
JULY, 1829.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Bonaparte, Napoleon
The Vendetta
The Gondreville Mystery
Colonel Chabert
The Seamy Side of History
A Woman of Thirty
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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 Burning Daylight by Jack London: topmost pinnacle of life. Higher than this no man could climb
nor had ever climbed. It was his day of days, his love-time and
his mating-time, and all crowned by this virginal possession of a
mate who had said "Oh, Elam," as she had said it, and looked at
him out of her soul as she had looked.
They cleared the crest of the hill, and he watched the joy mount
in her face as she gazed on the sweet, fresh land. He pointed
out
the group of heavily wooded knolls across the rolling stretches
of
ripe grain.
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