| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: for a second - "it is disgraceful to us!"
CHAPTER IV - TELLS IN WHAT A STARTLING MANNER I LEARNED THAT I WAS
NOT ALONE IN GRADEN SEA-WOOD
This was my wife's story, as I drew it from her among tears and
sobs. Her name was Clara Huddlestone: it sounded very beautiful
in my ears; but not so beautiful as that other name of Clara
Cassilis, which she wore during the longer and, I thank God, the
happier portion of her life. Her father, Bernard Huddlestone, had
been a private banker in a very large way of business. Many years
before, his affairs becoming disordered, he had been led to try
dangerous, and at last criminal, expedients to retrieve himself
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: variety to take on another, is incidental on generally unknown differences
in their vegetative systems, so in crossing, the greater or less facility
of one species to unite with another, is incidental on unknown differences
in their reproductive systems. There is no more reason to think that
species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to
prevent them crossing and blending in nature, than to think that trees have
been specially endowed with various and somewhat analogous degrees of
difficulty in being grafted together in order to prevent them becoming
inarched in our forests.
The sterility of first crosses between pure species, which have their
reproductive systems perfect, seems to depend on several circumstances; in
 On the Origin of Species |