| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and
light footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band
of revelers struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came
the Prince and Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the
singers, disheveled and wild like dancers surprised by the dawn,
when the tapers that have burned through the night struggle with
the sunlight.
They had come to offer the customary condolence to the young
heir.
"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the
Prince in Brambilla's ear.
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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 Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: prey) he feels free. He will tell you himself that the true sportsman
is never a snob, a coward, a duffer, a cheat, a thief, or a liar.
Curious, is it not, that he has not the same confidence in other sorts
of man?
And even sport is losing its freedom. Soon everybody will be
schooled, mentally and physically, from the cradle to the end of the
term of adult compulsory military service, and finally of compulsory
civil service lasting until the age of superannuation. Always more
schooling, more compulsion. We are to be cured by an excess of the
dose that has poisoned us. Satan is to cast out Satan.
Under the Whip
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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 An International Episode by Henry James: So she was not haunted with the sense of a vulgar imputation.
She was not in love with Lord Lambeth--she assured herself of that.
It will immediately be observed that when such assurances become
necessary the state of a young lady's affections is already ambiguous;
and, indeed, Bessie Alden made no attempt to dissimulate--to herself,
of course--a certain tenderness that she felt for the young nobleman.
She said to herself that she liked the type to which he belonged--
the simple, candid, manly, healthy English temperament.
She spoke to herself of him as women speak of young men they like--
alluded to his bravery (which she had never in the least seen
tested), to his honesty and gentlemanliness, and was not silent
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: tail. This smooth devil, and his four followers like unto himself,
had sworn relentless hatred to Pichou, and they made his life
difficult.
But his great and sufficient consolation for all toils and troubles
was the friendship with his master. In the long summer evenings,
when Dan Scott was making up his accounts in the store, or studying
his pocket cyclopaedia of medicine in the living-room of the Post,
with its low beams and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou
would lie contentedly at his feet. In the frosty autumnal mornings,
when the brant were flocking in the marshes at the head of the bay,
they would go out hunting together in a skiff. And who could lie so
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