| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake,
and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants
Of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry
as ever clustered around a Maypole.
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred
dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more
to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western
Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the
hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-
rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a
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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 The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Valley of the Shadow
There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
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