| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: but that our brethren would afford us such assistance as might
enable us to make him a handsome present according to custom.
This answer was not at all agreeable to the bassa, who returned an
answer that he would be satisfied with twenty thousand crowns,
provided we paid them on the spot, or gave him good securities for
the payment. To this we could only repeat what we had said before:
he then proposed to abate five thousand of his last demand, assuring
us that unless we came to some agreement, there was no torment so
cruel but we should suffer it, and talked of nothing but impaling
and flaying us alive; the terror of these threatenings was much
increased by his domestics, who told us of many of his cruelties.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: and one thing he came to know thoroughly well; he wanted her.
And so much did he want her that his old timidity of the
apron-string was put to rout. He, who had run away from women
most of his life, had now grown so courageous as to pursue. Some
Sunday, sooner or later, he would meet her outside the office,
somewhere in the hills, and then, if they did not get acquainted,
it would be because she did not care to get acquainted.
Thus he found another card in the hand the mad god had dealt him.
How important that card was to become he did not dream, yet he
decided that it was a pretty good card. In turn, he doubted.
Maybe it was a trick of Luck to bring calamity and disaster upon
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