| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: willows and covered it with dry grass and twigs.
This was shelter for the night; but alas! it was empty of food
and arrows. All day father badger prowled through the forest, but
without his arrows he could not get food for his children. Upon
his return, the cry of the little ones for meat, the sad quiet of
the mother with bowed head, hurt him like a poisoned arrow wound.
"I'll beg meat for you!" said he in an unsteady voice.
Covering his head and entire body in a long loose robe he halted
beside the big black bear. The bear was slicing red meat to hang
upon the rack. He did not pause for a look at the comer. As the
badger stood there unrecognized, he saw that the bear had brought
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: afterwards . . . you can show him the summons--"
"Ver' goot. Summons us. Dot shall pe mine egscuse. I shall show him
der chudgment."
Mme. Cibot went down to the court, and that very day at seven o'clock
she called to Schmucke. Schmucke found himself confronted with M.
Tabareau the bailiff, who called upon him to pay. Schmucke made
answer, trembling from head to foot, and was forthwith summoned
together with Pons, to appear in the county court to hear judgment
against him. The sight of the bailiff and a bit of stamped paper
covered with scrawls produced such an effect upon Schmucke, that he
held out no longer.
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: could make no headway, walking into trees and swearing there, like
a man looking for the matches in his bed-room. I knew it was risky
to light up, for my lantern would be visible all the way to the
point of the cape, and as no one went there after dark, it would be
talked about, and come to Case's ears. But what was I to do? I
had either to give the business over and lose caste with Maea, or
light up, take my chance, and get through the thing the smartest I
was able.
As long as I was on the path I walked hard, but when I came to the
black beach I had to run. For the tide was now nearly flowed; and
to get through with my powder dry between the surf and the steep
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and
below the upper middle classes,--a tribe whose virtues are well-nigh
vices, whose defects are never kindly, but whose habits and manners,
dull and insipid though they be, are not without a certain
originality. Something pinched and puny about Elisabeth Saillard was
painful to the eye. Her figure, scarcely over four feet in height, was
so thin that the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small
features, which clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague
resemblance to a weasel's snout. Though she was past thirty years old
she looked scarcely more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue,
overweighted by heavy eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch
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