| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: still, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy the woman's
victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was the late
sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitude of my
surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughts which
my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yet which
returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times when our
uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged for daily
life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.
Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushed
into a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me from
the sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: it would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his
chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to
shake. Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side - if
you can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and
into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could
least answer from his own wit. "Why have you never let me come
before?"
"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell
her how I came to know you."
"And what would have been the objection to that?"
"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate
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