| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: truth possessed even less than the usual attractions."
This neat epitaph implied the erection of a final tombstone
over the whole race, and Kate asked no more.
Meantime Malbone sat at the western door with Harry, and was
running on with one of his tirades, half jest, half earnest,
against American society.
"In America," he said, "everything which does not tend to money
is thought to be wasted, as our Quaker neighbor thinks the
children's croquet-ground wasted, because it is not a potato
field."
"Not just!" cried Harry. "Nowhere is there more respect for
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: she, it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined
the second migration, the expensive return and relapse, the
exchange again, as was fairly to be presumed, of the vaunted best
French for some special variety of the worst.
He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back;
not with the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain. He
prolonged it a little, in the immediate neighbourhood, after he
had quitted his chair; and the upshot of the whole morning for him
was that his campaign had begun. He had wanted to put himself in
relation, and he would be hanged if he were NOT in relation. He
was that at no moment so much as while, under the old arches of
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: tingling which induced horripilation. Afterwards he said to them:
"You are really all the chiefs of the Barbarians, and you have sworn
for them?"
"Yes!" they replied.
"Without constraint, from the bottom of your souls, with the intention
of fulfilling your promises?"
They assured him that they were returning to the rest in order to
fulfil them.
"Well!" rejoined the Suffet, "in accordance with the convention
concluded between myself, Barca, and the ambassadors of the
Mercenaries, it is you whom I choose and shall keep!"
Salammbo |
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: barrister's friendships almost always consists of his fellow-barristers;
the city man, who is free to select his society where he will, will be
oftenest found in company with his fellow-man of business; the medical
man's closest friendship is, in a large number of cases, for some man who
was once his fellow-student and has passed through the different stages of
his professional life with him; the friends and chosen companions of the
actor are commonly actors; of the savant, savants; of the farmer, farmers;
of the sailor, sailors. So generally is this the case that it would almost
attract attention and cause amusement were the boon companion of the sea
captain a leading politician, and the intimate friend of the clergyman an
actor, or the dearest friend of the farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind.
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