| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Persians or Afghans or something. There are not more than five of
us living now, but we come regular. I don't know what happened to
the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the
Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles and nose-ring for
himself. But I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank as well as
smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in a row
at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air.
They found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only
me, the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib
(she used to live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: encourager of indolence.
Indolence in the proper sense of the word, you understand. The
meaning which is commonly given to it, as Archbishop Trench pointed
out in his suggestive book about WORDS AND THEIR USES, is altogether
false. To speak of indolence as if it were a vice is just a great
big verbal slander.
Indolence is a virtue. It comes from two Latin words, which mean
freedom from anxiety or grief. And that is a wholesome state of
mind. There are times and seasons when it is even a pious and
blessed state of mind. Not to be in a hurry; not to be ambitious or
jealous or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody; not to fret
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