| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: have warned YOU, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and
its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass
your days now. They are not to be sad days: far from that, the
first duty of young people is to be delighted and delightful; but
they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. There is no
solemnity so deep, to a rightly-thinking creature, as that of dawn.
But not only in that beautiful sense, but in all their character and
method, they are to be solemn days. Take your Latin dictionary, and
look out "solennis," and fix the sense of the word well in your
mind, and remember that every day of your early life is ordaining
irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and practice of your soul;
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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 Death of the Lion by Henry James: done so much for her reputation as her lending Neil Paraday the
most beautiful of her numerous homes to die in. He took advantage
to the utmost of the singular favour. Day by day I saw him sink,
and I roamed alone about the empty terraces and gardens. His wife
never came near him, but I scarcely noticed it: as I paced there
with rage in my heart I was too full of another wrong. In the
event of his death it would fall to me perhaps to bring out in some
charming form, with notes, with the tenderest editorial care, that
precious heritage of his written project. But where was that
precious heritage and were both the author and the book to have
been snatched from us? Lady Augusta wrote me that she had done all
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