| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: this difficulty for information. I must learn what is at the
bottom of it all. If you do not know, cannot guess, or are not at
liberty to tell me, I shall take my hat and go back to my bank as
came."
"I do not know," answered the lawyer, "but I have an excellent
guess. Your father, and no one else, is at the root of this
apparently unnatural business."
"My father!" cried Francis, in extreme disdain. "Worthy man, I
know every thought of his mind, every penny of his fortune!"
"You misinterpret my words," said the lawyer. "I do not refer to
Mr. Scrymgeour, senior; for he is not your father. When he and his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: done and suffered. After this there was perfect peace, and the city had
rest; and her feeling was that she forgave the barbarians, who had severely
suffered at her hands and severely retaliated, but that she was indignant
at the ingratitude of the Hellenes, when she remembered how they had
received good from her and returned evil, having made common cause with the
barbarians, depriving her of the ships which had once been their salvation,
and dismantling our walls, which had preserved their own from falling. She
thought that she would no longer defend the Hellenes, when enslaved either
by one another or by the barbarians, and did accordingly. This was our
feeling, while the Lacedaemonians were thinking that we who were the
champions of liberty had fallen, and that their business was to subject the
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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 The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: SHORT PREFACE OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER.
This sermon is designed and undertaken that it might be an instruction
for children and the simple-minded. Hence of old it was called in Greek
catechism, i.e., instruction for children, what every Christian must
needs know, so that he who does not know this could not be numbered
with the Christians nor be admitted to any Sacrament, just as a
mechanic who does not understand the rules and customs of his trade is
expelled and considered incapable. Therefore we must have the young
learn the parts which belong to the Catechism or instruction for
children well and fluently and diligently exercise themselves in them
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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 A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Chaulieu (a woman past forty) made interest for him at Court, and
brought him the applause of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the gibes
of the Liberal party, who dubbed him "the poet of the sacristy."
Mme. de Bargeton, with these remarkable figures before her, no longer
wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien's good
looks. And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so
subtle, were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth
in them than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme;
and, most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a
materialistic epoch, and gilding it with poetry--then Anais felt all
the truth of Chatelet's dictum of the previous evening. Lucien was
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