| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: proclaiming that husbands and wives had a right to leave each
other whenever they were tired--or had seen some one else--"
Westall sat motionless, his eyes fixed on a pattern of the
carpet.
"You HAVE ceased to take this view, then?" he said as she broke
off. "You no longer believe that husbands and wives ARE
justified in separating--under such conditions?"
"Under such conditions?" she stammered. "Yes--I still believe
that--but how can we judge for others? What can we know of the
circumstances--?"
He interrupted her. "I thought it was a fundamental article 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 Blix by Frank Norris: she had expected a harridan.
K. D. B. looked like a servant-girl of the better sort, and was
really very neatly dressed. She was small, little even. She had
snappy black eyes, a resolute mouth, and a general air of being
very quiet, very matter-of-fact and complacent. She would be
disturbed at nothing, excited at nothing; Blix was sure of that.
She was placid, but it was the placidity not of the absence of
emotion, but of emotion disdained. Not the placidity of the
mollusk, but that of a mature and contemplative cat.
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: his family in Jamaica. The father, the Honourable Robert Jackson,
Custos Rotulorum of Kingston, came of a Yorkshire family, said to
be originally Scotch; and on the mother's side, counted kinship
with some of the Forbeses. The mother was Susan Campbell, one of
the Campbells of Auchenbreck. Her father Colin, a merchant in
Greenock, is said to have been the heir to both the estate and the
baronetcy; he claimed neither, which casts a doubt upon the fact,
but he had pride enough himself, and taught enough pride to his
family, for any station or descent in Christendom. He had four
daughters. One married an Edinburgh writer, as I have it on a
first account - a minister, according to another - a man at least
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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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: blasphemies. They want to give to Christendom the damage caused
by their own negligence. Then, when we say, "Christendom does not
err," we shall also be saying that they do not err, since
Christendom believes it to be so. So no pilgrimage can be wrong,
no matter how obviously the Devil is a participant in it. No
indulgence can be wrong, regardless of how horrible the lies
involved. In other words, there is nothing there but holiness!
Therefore to this you reply, "It is not a question of who is and
who is not condemned." They inject this irrelevant idea in order
to divert us from the topic at hand. We are now discussing the
Word of God. What Christendom is or do does belongs somewhere
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