| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: sight between the alders, some smile of light, lingering on the
rising corn-fields beyond the meadow and the melting purple of a
distant hill, reached to the seclusion of his heart. He was
soothed and cheered; his head lifted itself in the presentiment of
a future less lonely than the past, and the everlasting trouble
vanished from his eyes.
Suddenly, at a turn of the path, two mowers from the meadow, with
their scythes upon their shoulders, came upon him. He had not
heard their feet on the deep turf. His chest relaxed, and his head
began to sink; then, with the most desperate effort in his life, he
lifted it again, and, darting a rapid side glance at the men,
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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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: nothing in particular, than would carry on all the wars, by
sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It may very well be so,
and yet not touch the point in question. For what I desire is
to see some of this nobility brought face to face with me in
an inspiriting achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a
cigar in my club smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment,
without adding anything to mankind's treasury of illustrious
and encouraging examples. It is not over the virtues of a
curate-and-tea-party novel, that people are abashed into high
resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to
stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with
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