| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: their newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically with
the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure the
inestimable advantage of "atmosphere." In this privileged air
they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet
studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves
totally unconscious of the disparity between their different
guests, and beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at
the source of wisdom.
In old days Lansing would have got half an hour's amusement,
followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs.
Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking
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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 Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: coat was somewhat shrunk.
Benjamin tried on the tam-o'-
shanter, but it was too big for him.
Then he suggested that they should
fill the pocket-handkerchief with
onions, as a little present for his Aunt.
Peter did not seem to be enjoying
himself; he kept hearing noises.
Benjamin, on the contrary, was
perfectly at home, and ate a lettuce
leaf. He said that he was in the habit
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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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: warrant for his arrest. Innes had early word of it, and was able to
take precautions. In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an
unpleasant charge hanging over him, he had judged it the part of
prudence to be off instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father
at Inverauld, and put himself in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port
in a storm! He was manfully turning his back on the Parliament House
and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the race-course and the ring;
and manfully prepared, until these clouds should have blown by, to share
a living grave with Archie Weir at Hermiston.
To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was
to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: had rather bewilderedly to go to bed on.
II
It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave
after this. He was full of attentions to his mother's ambassador;
in spite of which, all the while, the latter's other relations
rather remarkably contrived to assert themselves. Strether's
sittings pen in hand with Mrs. Newsome up in his own room were
broken, yet they were richer; and they were more than ever
interspersed with the hours in which he reported himself, in a
different fashion, but with scarce less earnestness and fulness,
to Maria Gostrey. Now that, as he would have expressed it, he had
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