| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: a good girl, but could not help knowing her power and using it.
Her Mamma was very anxious about her daughter's future, as all good
Mammas should be.
When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor and has the right of
wearing open-work jam-tart jewels in gold and enamel on his
clothes, and of going through a door before every one except a
Member of Council, a Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is worth
marrying. At least, that is what ladies say. There was a
Commissioner in Simla, in those days, who was, and wore, and did,
all I have said. He was a plain man--an ugly man--the ugliest man
in Asia, with two exceptions. His was a face to dream about and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: old pigsty chick-weeds flourished, and ice-plants lifted heir transparent
leaves. Waldo was at work in the wagon-house again. He was making a
kitchen table for Em. As the long curls gathered in heaps before his
plane, he paused for an instant now and again to throw one down to a small
naked nigger, who had crept from its mother, who stood churning in the
sunshine, and had crawled into the wagon-house.
From time to time the little animal lifted its fat hand as it expected a
fresh shower of curls; till Doss, jealous of his master's noticing any
other small creature but himself, would catch the curl in his mouth and
roll the little Kaffer over in the sawdust, much to that small animal's
contentment. It was too lazy an afternoon to be really ill-natured, so
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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 Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: they go out three by three to meet him. The knight they all
greet and salute, but they give no heed to Erec, for they did not
know him. Erec follows close upon the knight through the town,
until he saw him lodged. Then, very joyful, he passed on a
little farther until he saw reclining upon some steps a vavasor
(7) well on in years. He was a comely man, with white locks,
debonair, pleasing, and frank. There he was seated all alone,
seeming to be engaged in thought. Erec took him for an honest
man who would at once give him lodging. When he turned through
the gate into the yard, the vavasor ran to meet him, and saluted
him before Erec had said a word. "Fair sir," says he, "be
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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 The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that the writer of Genesis was
an inspired geologist! This writer of Genesis points out in
Nature "a grand, fourfold division, set forth in an orderly
succession of times: First, the water population; secondly, the
air population; thirdly, the land population of animals;
fourthly, the land population consummated in man." And it seems
that this division and sequence "is understood to have been so
affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a
demonstrated conclusion and established fact." Hence we must
conclude of the writer of Genesis that "his knowledge was
divine"! Consider that this was actually published in one of the
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