| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: ruins, material, and alas! spiritual, were all around them; the
lands and the creeds alike lay waste. There was ruffianism and
misery among the masses of Europe; unbelief and artificiality among
the upper classes; churches and monasteries defiled, cities sacked,
farmsteads plundered and ruinate, and all the wretchedness which
Callot has immortalised--for a warning to evil rulers--in his
Miseres de la Guerre. The world was all gone wrong: but as for
setting it right again--who could do that? And so men fell into a
sentimental regret for the past, and its beauties, all exaggerated
by the foreshortening of time; while they wanted strength or faith
to reproduce it. At last they became so accustomed to the rags and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: other roundly. Mr. Standifer apologized calmly for the accident,
but Sharp continued his vituperations. Mr. Standifer was observed
to draw near and speak a few sentences to the desperado in so low
a tone that no one else caught the words. Sharp sprang up, wild
with rage. In the meantime Standifer had stepped some yards away,
and was standing quietly with his arms folded across the breast of
his loosely hanging coat.
With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp so
dreaded, he reached for the gun he always carried in his hip
pocket--a movement that has preceded the death of at least a dozen
men at his hands. Quick as the motion was, the bystanders assert
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