| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: appeared basely vulgar; yet he liked none the less to hear himself
go, and when he had reached his first landing - taking it all with
no rush, but quite steadily - that stage of success drew from him a
gasp of relief.
The house, withal, seemed immense, the scale of space again
inordinate; the open rooms, to no one of which his eyes deflected,
gloomed in their shuttered state like mouths of caverns; only the
high skylight that formed the crown of the deep well created for
him a medium in which he could advance, but which might have been,
for queerness of colour, some watery under-world. He tried to
think of something noble, as that his property was really grand, a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: nobility of soul, the springs of which had been lowered by experience
until the cruel teachings of life had driven it back into the farthest
recesses of this most singular human being. He was certainly not an
ordinary miser; and his passion covered, no doubt, extreme enjoyments
and secret conceptions.
"What is the present rate of Venetian sequins?" he said abruptly to
his future apprentice.
"Three-quarters at Brussels; one in Ghent."
"What is the freight on the Scheldt?"
"Three sous parisis."
"Any news at Ghent?"
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