| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: started with. Drops fell from its eyes as it strained them; each step it
climbed was wet with blood. Then it came out here."
And I thought of the garden where men sang with their arms around one
another; and the mountain-side where they worked in company. And I
shuddered.
And I said, "Is it not terribly alone here?"
God said, "It is never alone!"
I said, "What has it for all its labour? I see nothing return to it."
Then God touched my eyes, and I saw stretched out beneath us the plains of
Heaven and Hell, and all that was within them.
God said, "From that lone height on which he stands, all things are open.
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: Falworth blood." And in after-years, true to his father's
prediction, the "vile tongue" served him well.
As for his physical training, that pretty well filled up the
hours between his morning studies at the monastery and his
evening studies at home. Then it was that old Diccon Bowman took
him in hand, than whom none could be better fitted to shape his
young body to strength and his hands to skill in arms. The old
bowman had served with Lord Falworth's father under the Black
Prince both in France and Spain, and in long years of war had
gained a practical knowledge of arms that few could surpass.
Besides the use of the broadsword, the short sword, the
 Men of Iron |