The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: couldn't quite understand me. I have had letters from them since,
but it is such broken English I can't make it out. Back of those
men's time the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more,
nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and
sometimes a mixture of all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin,
and ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come
billions and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that
Satan himself couldn't understand. The fact is, where you strike
one man in the English settlements that you can understand, you
wade through awful swarms that talk something you can't make head
nor tail of. You see, every country on earth has been overlaid so
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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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: cigar? Why, in my time, no two young men could be intimate till they
had seen the color of their blood! But 'sdeath, sir, last evening,
sailor-like, I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I ran you
down. Shake hands; I would rather take a hundred rebuffs from a
Longueville than cause his family the smallest regret."
However coldly the young man tried to behave to the Comte de
Kergarouet, he could not resist the frank cordiality of his manner,
and presently gave him his hand.
"You were going out riding," said the Count. "Do not let me detain
you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg you will come to dinner
to-day at the Villa Planat. My nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man
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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 Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: your Majesty, but for the fact that its missiles can be so
effectively averted by my peculiar method of treating the armour
plates with a new- "
The King signed to the Great Head Factotum to approach.
"Search this man," he said, "and report how many pockets he has."
"Forty-three, Sire," said the Great Head Factotum, completing the
scrutiny.
"May it please your Majesty," cried the Ingenious Patriot, in
terror, "one of them contains tobacco."
"Hold him up by the ankles and shake him," said the King; "then
give him a check for forty-two million tumtums and put him to
 Fantastic Fables |
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 A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: was a particular case, my lord, a CASUS IMPROVISUS, as I may say,
in whilk I had no chaplain of my own persuasion to act as my
adviser. I found, in short, that although my being a Protestant
might be winked at, in respect that I was a man of action, and
had more experience than all the Dons in our TERTIA put together,
yet, when in garrison, it was expected I should go to mass with
the regiment. Now, my lord, as a true Scottish man, and educated
at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, I was bound to uphold the
mass to be an act of blinded papistry and utter idolatry, whilk I
was altogether unwilling to homologate by my presence. True it
is, that I consulted on the point with a worthy countryman of my
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