| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: to answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool.
What did England do in the war, anyhow?
On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100,000 volunteers. He had
them within fourteen days. In the first week of September 170,000 men
enrolled, 30,000 in a single day. Eleven months later, two million had
enlisted. Ten months later, five million and forty-one thousand had
voluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy.
In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800
airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42,000 airmen. In
her Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917,
several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first nine
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: from the human and civilised neighbourhood of the road, she
stretched herself on the green margin in the shadow of a tree.
Sleep closed on her, at first with a horror of fainting, but when
she ceased to struggle, kindly embracing her. So she was taken home
for a little, from all her toils and sorrows, to her Father's arms.
And there in the meanwhile her body lay exposed by the highwayside,
in tattered finery; and on either hand from the woods the birds came
flying by and calling upon others, and debated in their own tongue
this strange appearance.
The sun pursued his journey; the shadow flitted from her feet,
shrank higher and higher, and was upon the point of leaving her
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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 Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: But that was easier said than done, for, quick as a wink, as they
came to lay hold of him, the soldier whisked the feather cap from
his pocket and clapped it upon his head, and then they might as
well have hoped to find the south wind in winter as to find him.
But though he got safe away from that trouble he was deep enough
in the dumps, you may be sure of that. Away he went, out into the
wide world, leaving that town behind him. Away he went, until
by-and-by he came to a great forest, and for three days he
travelled on and on--he knew not whither. On the third night, as
he sat beside a fire which he had built to keep him warm, he
suddenly bethought himself of the little round stone which had
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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 An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: being au fond, in spite of appearances, an "original." In the
provinces it was not permissible to be original: being original means
having ideas that are not understood by others; the provinces demand
equality of mind as well as equality of manners and customs.
The marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon seemed, after 1804, a thing so
problematical that the saying "married like Mademoiselle Cormon"
became proverbial in Alencon as applied to ridiculous failures. Surely
the sarcastic mood must be an imperative need in France, that so
excellent a woman should excite the laughter of Alencon. Not only did
she receive the whole society of the place at her house, not only was
she charitable, pious, incapable of saying an unkind thing, but she
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