| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: which had hitherto been used amongst them.
"Arise," he continued, "put on thy mantle; speak not, but tread
lightly, and follow me."
Sir Kenneth arose, and took his sword.
"It needs not," answered the anchorite, in a whisper; "we are
going where spiritual arms avail much, and fleshly weapons are
but as the reed and the decayed gourd."
The knight deposited his sword by the bedside as before, and,
armed only with his dagger, from which in this perilous country
he never parted, prepared to attend his mysterious host.
The hermit then moved slowly forwards, and was followed by the
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: earth, their own weight, that of the projectile, and the objects
it enclosed, had been subject to an increasing diminution. If they
could not prove this loss of the projectile, a moment would arrive
when it would be sensibly felt upon themselves and the utensils
and instruments they used.
It is needless to say that a scale would not show this loss; for
the weight destined to weight the object would have lost exactly
as much as the object itself; but a spring steelyard for
example, the tension of which was independent of the attraction,
would have given a just estimate of this loss.
We know that the attraction, otherwise called the weight, is in
 From the Earth to the Moon |