| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thought of it. Small wonder
then that he came back to it on the morrow of his return. He was
drawn there this time as irresistibly as the other, yet with a
confidence, almost, that was doubtless the effect of the many
months that had elapsed. He had lived, in spite of himself, into
his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had
wandered, as might be said, from the circumference to the centre of
his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his
extinction; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness
of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all
meagre and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: countenanced him in this lie."
The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted
Byrne without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so
often at the bottom of Spanish dignity -
"No doubt the senor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I
were stuck under the fifth rib," he retorted. "But what of this
poor sinner here?" Then changing his tone. "Senor, by the
necessities of the times I live here in exile, a Castilian and an
old Christian, existing miserably in the midst of these brute
Asturians, and dependent on the worst of them all, who has less
conscience and scruples than a wolf. And being a man of
Within the Tides |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: orators saying that the mill was a sham put up to fool voters and
that it was not manufacturing any tin. When the young Democrats
heard such rot they turned against their party. They were farm
boys who had been brought up in that county and had quit the farm
and gone into the tin mill because they could earn twice as much
making tin as they could farming. A worker at work is hard-headed
enough to know that when an orator tells him he is not working
and not earning any money, the orator is an ass. These lies about
fake factories hurt the Democrats by turning all the mill
Democrats into Republicans. This is the only method I have ever
used in campaigning. The Republicans carried the town. When, two
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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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
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