The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: daily bread, like mites crawling over each other in a cheese.
Out of this mass were struggling upwards perpetually, all who had a
little ambition, a little scholarship, or a little money,
endeavouring to become members of the middle class by obtaining a
Government appointment. "A man," says M. de Tocqueville, "endowed
with some education and small means, thought it not decorous to die
without having been a Government officer." "Every man, according to
his condition," says a contemporary writer, "wants to be something
by command of the king."
It was not merely the "natural vanity" of which M. de Tocqueville
accuses his countrymen, which stirred up in them this eagerness
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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 Europeans by Henry James: grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a
hundred dollars to a young man who made "sitting" so entertaining.
For Felix was paid for his pictures, making, as he did, no secret
of the fact that in guiding his steps to the Western world affectionate
curiosity had gone hand in hand with a desire to better his condition.
He took his uncle's portrait quite as if Mr. Wentworth had never
averted himself from the experiment; and as he compassed his end
only by the exercise of gentle violence, it is but fair to add
that he allowed the old man to give him nothing but his time.
He passed his arm into Mr. Wentworth's one summer morning--
very few arms indeed had ever passed into Mr. Wentworth's--and led
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