| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: HIM out of the battle when he was wounded. And not just once, but
twice. Yes, I know a lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits,
and faces; and you can't disguise a person that's done me a
kindness so that I won't know him thereafter wherever I find him.
I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know the stale track
from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo
Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him - he will tell you so. Many a
time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn,
"Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me." Then he
goes to sleep. He knows he can trust me, because I have a
reputation. A scout horse that has a reputation does not play with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: you serve nobody. Nobody is interested in nobody; the government clerk
lives between two negations. The world has neither pity nor respect,
neither heart nor head; everybody forgets to-morrow the service of
yesterday. Now each one of you may be, like Monsieur Baudoyer, an
administrative genius, a Chateaubriand of reports, a Bossouet of
circulars, the Canalis of memorials, the gifted son of diplomatic
despatches; but I tell you there is a fatal law which interferes with
all administrative genius,--I mean the law of promotion by average.
This average is based on the statistics of promotion and the
statistics of mortality combined. It is very certain that on entering
whichever section of the Civil Service you please at the age of
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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 The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: searched the road from side to side, looking for any other signs
that might have been left by the hand which had thrown the package
out of the window. The snow, which had been falling softly thus far,
began to come down in heavier flakes, and Muller quickened his pace.
The tracks would soon be covered, but they could still be plainly
seen. They led out into the open country, but when the first little
hill had been climbed a drift heaped itself up, cutting off the
trail completely.
Muller stood on the top of this knoll at a spot where the street
divided. Towards the right it led down into a factory suburb;
towards the left the road led on to a residence colony, and straight
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: us we know but the boundaries that march with ours. Of the points
in his wife's character not in direct contact with his own,
Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling sense of
her remoteness was intensified by the discovery that, in one way,
she was closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years
in happy unconsciousness of the possession of a sensitive nerve,
he had lived beside his wife unaware that her individuality had
become a part of the texture of his life, ineradicable as some
growth on a vital organ; and he now felt himself at once incapable
of forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade its effects.
To escape, the next morning, the confidences of the breakfast-
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