The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: "That the power of God is infinite."
"Did my godfather ever speak to you of such matters?"
"Yes, often. He had entirely changed his views of them. His
conversion, as he told me at least twenty times, dated from the day
when a woman in Paris heard you praying for him in Nemours, and saw
the red dot you made against Saint-Savinien's day in your almanac."
Ursula uttered a piercing cry, which alarmed the priest; she
remembered the scene when, on returning to Nemours, her godfather read
her soul, and took away the almanac.
"If that is so," she said, "then my visions are possibly true. My
godfather has appeared to me, as Jesus appeared to his disciples. He
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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 Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: innocent bait to win his friendship, with never a thought of what
was to come of it.
"It happened of course while you were rooming there," the editor
shot at him.
James nodded sullenly.
His cousin knew now that more than once he had put away doubts of
James. When Sam Miller told him of her disappearance he had
thought of the lawyer and had dismissed his suspicions as
unworthy. He had always believed James to be a more moral man than
himself, and he had turned his own back on the temptation lest it
might prove too great for him. It would have been better for
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