| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: found out that everything else was higher too. They were like rats in
a trap, that was the truth; and more of them were piling in every day.
By and by they would have their revenge, though, for the thing was
getting beyond human endurance, and the people would rise and murder
the packers. Grandmother Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some such
strange thing; another son of hers was working in the mines of Siberia,
and the old lady herself had made speeches in her time--which made her
seem all the more terrible to her present auditors.
They called her back to the story of the house. The German family
had been a good sort. To be sure there had been a great many of them,
which was a common failing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard,
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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 Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: Graumann guilty because of the circumstantial evidence which will be
against him. My letter, given to the Presiding Judge after the
Attorney has made his speech, will cause him humiliation, will ruin
his brilliant arguments and cast ridicule upon him.
Do not think me hard or revengeful. I do not hate anyone now that
death is so near. But is it inhuman that I should want to teach
these two men a lesson? a lesson which they need, believe me, and
it is such a slight compensation for the torture these last eight
years have been to me!
And now I will explain in detail all the circumstances. I have
arranged that Albert Graumann shall come to me on the evening 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 A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: and there is scarce a corner in Montreuil where the want of him
will not be felt: he has but one misfortune in the world, continued
he, "he is always in love." - I am heartily glad of it, said I, -
'twill save me the trouble every night of putting my breeches under
my head. In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge
as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost
all my life, and I hope I shall go on so till I die, being firmly
persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some
interval betwixt one passion and another: whilst this interregnum
lasts, I always perceive my heart locked up, - I can scarce find in
it to give Misery a sixpence; and therefore I always get out of it
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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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: swells,--and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the bar,--and beside
him, almost within arm's reach, a great billiard-table swaying,
and a dead woman clinging there, and ... the child.
A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ...
How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is
strong as death,--the desperate force of love! Not in vain; for
the frail creature bound to the mother's corpse with a silken
scarf has still the strength to cry out:--"Maman! maman!" But
time is life now; and the tiny hands must be pulled away from the
fair dead neck, and the scarf taken to bind the infant firmly to
Feliu's broad shoulders,--quickly, roughly; for the ebb will not
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