| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and
guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose
leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But
his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers
forbade the comparison.
"What was that you called me, Baldy?" he asked. "What kind of a
concert was it?"
"A 'consort,'" corrected Baldy--"a 'prince-consort.' It's a kind of
short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a
four-card flush."
Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scabbard
 Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: life in the honorable company of a noble and his wife, without
suspecting them of the base crimes and trickery of your own kind? Kill
my son! take him from his mother! Where did you get such crazy ideas?
Am I a madman? Why do you attempt to frighten me about the life of
that vigorous child? Fool! I defy your silly talk--but remember this,
since you are here, your miserable life shall answer for that of the
mother and the child."
The bonesetter was puzzled by this sudden change in the count's
intentions. This show of tenderness for the infant alarmed him far
more than the impatient cruelty and savage indifference hitherto
manifested by the count, whose tone in pronouncing the last words
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