| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: length of the canyon, but now its head waters had been tapped
by the shaft at Silverado, and for a great part of its course
it wandered sunless among the joints of the mountain. No
wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, far
before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should
come trotting forth into the sunlight with a song.
The two stages had gone by when I got down, and the Toll
House stood, dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place
enchanted. My mission was after hay for bedding, and that I
was readily promised. But when I mentioned that we were
waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads. Rufe was not
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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 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an
original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern
cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is
unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
service with that gallant army which had fought the
disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he
chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the
release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the
opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he
did what he could. No service was too humble for him to
 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |