| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: and it was the bishop. He stood at the front of the steps and
looked up at Mr. Pierce.
"I dare say," he said, trying to look easy, "that this is sooner
than you expected us!"
Mr. Pierce looked down at the crowd. Then he smiled, a growing
smile that ended in a grin.
"On the contrary," he said, "I've been expecting you for an hour
or more."
The procession began to move gloomily up the steps. All of them
carried hand luggage, and they looked tired and sheepish Miss
Cobb stopped in front of Mr. Pierce.
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: disown him, as I knew him - which you at last, confronted with him
in his difference, so cruelly didn't, my dear, - well, he must have
been, you see, less dreadful to me. And it may have pleased him
that I pitied him."
She was beside him on her feet, but still holding his hand - still
with her arm supporting him. But though it all brought for him
thus a dim light, "You 'pitied' him?" he grudgingly, resentfully
asked.
"He has been unhappy, he has been ravaged," she said.
"And haven't I been unhappy? Am not I - you've only to look at me!
- ravaged?"
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: a little patience and a taste for exercise and bad air.
To breathe dust and bombazine, to feed the mind on
cackling gossip, to hear three parts of a case and drink
a glass of sherry, to long with indescribable longings
for the hour when a man may slip out of his travesty and
devote himself to golf for the rest of the afternoon, and
to do this day by day and year after year, may seem so
small a thing to the inexperienced! But those who have
made the experiment are of a different way of thinking,
and count it the most arduous form of idleness.
More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where judges
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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 Critias by Plato: which ran all round the island. The guards were distributed in the zones
according to the trust reposed in them; the most trusted of them were
stationed in the citadel. The docks were full of triremes and stores. The
land between the harbour and the sea was surrounded by a wall, and was
crowded with dwellings, and the harbour and canal resounded with the din of
human voices.
The plain around the city was highly cultivated and sheltered from the
north by mountains; it was oblong, and where falling out of the straight
line followed the circular ditch, which was of an incredible depth. This
depth received the streams which came down from the mountains, as well as
the canals of the interior, and found a way to the sea. The entire country
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