| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: an ascetic creed.
No wonder that the appearance of "Telemaque," published in Holland
without the permission of Fenelon, delighted throughout Europe that
public which is always delighted with new truths, as long as it is
not required to practise them. To read "Telemaque" was the right
and the enjoyment of everyone. To obey it, the duty only of
princes. No wonder that, on the other hand, this "Vengeance de
peuples, lecon des rois," as M. de Lamartine calls it, was taken for
the bitterest satire by Louis XIV., and completed the disgrace of
one who had dared to teach the future king of France that he must
show himself, in all things, the opposite of his grandfather. No
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: rolling, marble-playing cubs of seven years! - or of awkward,
diffident, sentimental immaturities of nineteen! - or of vigorous
people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but
chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations like so
many helpless galley-slaves! Think of the dull sameness of a
society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks,
habits, tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it earth would
be, with its variety of types and faces and ages, and the
enlivening attrition of the myriad interests that come into
pleasant collision in such a variegated society."
"Look here," says I, "do you know what you're doing?"
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: a good hunt for the bird.
And what was the result? The woodcock, in falling, had caught
in the fork of a branch, right at the top of an aspen-tree, and it
was all we could do to knock it out from there.
When we brought it home in triumph, it was something of an
"occasion," and my father and Turgénieff were far more
delighted than we were. It turned out that they were both in the
right, and everything ended to their mutual satisfaction.
Iván Sergéyevitch slept down-stairs in my
father's study. When the party broke up for the night, I used to
see him to his room, and while he was undressing I sat on his bed
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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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: around her. And so they went to his van and drove to a vacant lot
where the young man kissed her and "liberated" her and told her to
leave and drove away.
Many days later--days that passed without recognition or
remembrance--the girl found herself sitting on a bench waiting for a
bus in the middle of the desert. As she sat there gazing at the
distant mountains, conscious of little more than the rising heat,
she heard herself say, "I don't know what to do."
"Whatever you do will be foolish," said a voice from behind her.
"What?" the girl asked with some surprise, not sure whether she was
listening to a person or a hallucination. The voice was that of an
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