| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: Vanderlyn and his wife. "Why should two people who've just done
each other the best turn they could behave like sworn enemies
ever after?" If in offering Nick his freedom she had indeed
done him such a service as that, perhaps he no longer hated her,
would no longer be unwilling to see her .... At any rate, why
should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a
spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet
and "settle things"? The business-like word "settle" (how she
hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs upon
his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern,
too free from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he
loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all
his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he
could have played upon it by nature. It may seem hard to say
it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat.
The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold
provender for immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a
double buggy; the crown prince, on horseback, led the way
like an outrider. Bags and boxes and a second-hand stove
were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson's team.
It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure.
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