| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: have been fortunately pretermitted. But an aggregation
of comfort is not distasteful like an aggregation of the
reverse. Nobody cares how many lords and ladies, and
divines and lawyers, may have been crowded into these
houses in the past - perhaps the more the merrier. The
glasses clink around the china punch-bowl, some one
touches the virginals, there are peacocks' feathers on
the chimney, and the tapers burn clear and pale in the
red firelight. That is not an ugly picture in itself,
nor will it become ugly upon repetition. All the better
if the like were going on in every second room; the LAND
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: heroics become not a woman of your years. And too, you
must not ruin the so costly gown that will be returned
to-morrow."
Frau Nirlanger's white face was lifted from the
shelter of her arms. The stricken look was still upon
it, but there was no cowering in her attitude now.
Slowly she rose to her feet. I had not realized that she
was so tall.
"The gown does not go back," she said.
"So?" he snarled, with a savage note in his voice.
"Now hear me. There shall be no more buying of gowns and
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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 A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: was no road or path whatsoever; and to add to the difficulty, the
mountains were already covered with snow. It was a sublime scene
to look up to them, piled in great masses, one upon another, the
front rank of dazzling whiteness, while those which arose behind
them caught a rosy tint from the setting of a clear wintry sun.
Ben Cruachan, superior in magnitude, and seeming the very citadel
of the Genius of the Region, rose high above the others, showing
his glimmering and scathed peak to the distance of many miles.
The followers of Montrose were men not to be daunted by the
sublime, yet terrible prospect before them. Many of them were of
that ancient race of Highlanders, who not only willingly made
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: dominate without exasperating. He more than once spoke of Ivan as
a living satire on physiognomists and phrenologists; and as I am a
phrenologist, I listened with some incredulity.
"Look at him," he would say. "Observe the low, retreating brow,
the flat face, the surly mouth, the broad base of the head, and the
huge bull-like neck. Would not anyone say Ivan was as destructive
as a panther, as tenacious as a bull-dog, as brutal as a bull? Yet
he is the gentlest of sluggish creatures, and as tender-hearted as
a girl! That thick-set muscular frame shrouds a hare's heart. He
is so faithful and so attached that I believe for me he would risk
his life; but on no account could you get him to place himself in
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