| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Long and loud laughed Hiawatha!
Then began the deadly conflict,
Hand to hand among the mountains;
From his eyry screamed the eagle,
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
Sat upon the crags around them,
Wheeling flapped his wings above them.
Like a tall tree in the tempest
Bent and lashed the giant bulrush;
And in masses huge and heavy
Crashing fell the fatal Wawbeek;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: there rose the killing instinct. For one moment he joined
the force of combatants -- orally.
"What are you waiting for, Sam?" I said in a whisper.
"Let him have it now!"
Sam gave a melancholy sigh.
"You don't understand; but he does," he said. "He
knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among
white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when
he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet.
You can't do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men
or by himself. That's why. He knows it, too. We
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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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: keenest politicians of the court were filled with suspicion of the
Medici; though Francois I. always repelled it. Consequently, the
Gondi, Strozzi, Ruggieri, Sardini, etc.,--in short, all those who were
called distinctively "the Italians,"--were compelled to employ greater
resources of mind, shrewd policy, and courage, to maintain themselves
at court against the weight of disfavor which pressed upon them.
During her husband's reign Catherine's amiability to Diane de Poitiers
went to such great lengths that intelligent persons must regard it as
proof of that profound dissimulation which men, events, and the
conduct of Henri II. compelled Catherine de' Medici to employ. But
they go too far when they declare that she never claimed her rights as
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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 Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: Oscar ate two helps of everything with a good appetite, and between
whiles looked at his notes, which lay open beside him on the table. At
the stroke of two he was again knocking at his pupils' door. But no
answer came. John had gone away somewhere for indefinite hours and the
door was locked. So Oscar wrote: "Called, two p.m.," on a scrap of
envelope, signed his name, and put it through the letter-slit. It
crossed his mind to hunt other pupils for his vacant time, but he
decided against this at once, and returned to his own room. Three
o'clock found him back at the door, knocking scrupulously, The idea of
performing his side of the contract, of tendering his goods and standing
ready at all times to deliver them, was in his commercially mature mind.
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