| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: chill, madame, on your way here. But you can rest and warm yourself a
bit."
"We are not so black as the devil!" cried the man.
The kindly intention in the words and tones of the charitable couple
won the old lady's confidence. She said that a strange man had been
following her, and she was afraid to go home alone.
"Is that all!" returned he of the red bonnet; "wait for me,
citoyenne."
He handed the gold coin to his wife, and then went out to put on his
National Guard's uniform, impelled thereto by the idea of making some
adequate return for the money; an idea that sometimes slips into 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 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: She met Mrs. Westlake in Uncle Whittier's store, and before
that alert stare forgot her determination to be rude, and was
shakily cordial.
She was sure that all the men on the street, even Guy
Pollock and Sam Clark, leered at her in an interested hopeful
way, as though she were a notorious divorcee. She felt as
insecure as a shadowed criminal. She wished to see Erik, and
wished that she had never seen him. She fancied that Kennicott
was the only person in town who did not know all--
know incomparably more than there was to know--about herself
and Erik. She crouched in her chair as she imagined men
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the
old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point,
the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration
will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either.
If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason
for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity,
and a firm reliance on him who has never yet forsaken this favored land,
are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.
In YOUR hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in MINE,
is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail YOU.
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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 Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: saw the Spirit still served us we grew afraid of too strong
winds, and of shoals, and of careless leaping fish, and of
all the people on all the shores where we landed.'
'Why?' said Dan.
'Because of the gold - because of our gold. Gold
changes men altogether. Thorkild of Borkum did not
change. He laughed at Witta for his fears, and at us for
our counselling Witta to furl sail when the ship pitched at all.
"'Better be drowned out of hand," said Thorkild of
Borkum, "than go tied to a deck-load of yellow dust."
'He was a landless man, and had been slave to some
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