| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: By and by they begin to suspect the truth, and Huck Finn is
persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming down to a huge
raft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them,
creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering
the needed information by eavesdropping:--
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is
impatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by
Jim said it was such a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no
risk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and listen--
they would talk about Cairo, because they would be calculating
to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they would
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: back the matter of a pace. I saw a girl lay one hand on a young
man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she
said something in the native with a gasping voice. Three little
boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of
them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of
top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-
piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I came up
hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant
business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the
three faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran
for his mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul,
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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: renounced his unrealized dreams with silent reproach, and
Sergéi with morbid misanthropy. The greater the original
store of love in such characters, the stronger, if only for a time,
is their resemblance to Timon of Athens.
In the winter of 1901-02 my father was ill in the Crimea, and for
a long time lay between life and death. Uncle Seryózha, who
felt himself getting weaker, could not bring himself to leave
Pirogóvo, and in his own home followed anxiously the course
of my father's illness by the letters which several members of our
family wrote him, and by the bulletins in the newspapers.
When my father began to improve, I went back home, and on the
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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 The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects.
Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision.
She said:
"What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full!
You have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep
you from walking into the fire. You'll stay right where you are!"
"Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out--I'm certain of it."
"Sally Foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?"
"Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was."
"Oh, listen to the man! Some day you've got to prove to the
executors that you never inquired. What then?"
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