| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: but a fractional portion of the series of hillocks containing veins of
silver, and as yet unquarried. Nor is the silver-bearing region
gradually becoming circumscribed. On the contrary it is evidently
extending in wider area from year to year. That is to say, during the
period in which thousands of workers[3] have been employed within the
mines no hand was ever stopped for want of work to do. Rather, at any
given moment, the work to be done was more than enough for the hands
employed. And so it is to-day with the owners of slaves working in the
mines; no one dreams of reducing the number of his hands. On the
contrary, the object is perpetually to acquire as many additional
hands as the owner possibly can. The fact is that with few hands to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: strong, and stirred it into a kind of spasm of introspection.
"How selfish have I, too, been!" she thought. "I saw only what
I wished to see, did only what I preferred. Loving Philip"
(for the sudden self-reproach left her free to think of him),
"I could not see that I was separating him from one whom he
might perhaps have truly loved. If he made me blind, may he
not easily have bewildered her, and have been himself
bewildered? How I tried to force myself upon him, too!
Ungenerous, unwomanly! What am I, that I should judge another?"
She threw herself on her knees at the bedside.
Still Emilia slept, but now she stirred her head in the
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