| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: She'd write a letter to someone, before she died,--
Just saying 'Felix did it--and wouldn't marry.'
And then she'd die . . . But that was hard on Paul . . .
Paul would never forgive her--he'd never forgive her!
Sometimes she almost thought Paul really loved her . . .
She saw him look reproachfully at her coffin.
And then she closed her eyes and walked again
Those nightmare streets that she had walked so often:
Under an arc-lamp swinging in the wind
She stood, and stared in through a drug-store window,
Watching a clerk wrap up a little pill-box.
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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 Hiero by Xenophon: pitiful? For, it is a certainty, the ordinary person may accept at
once each service rendered by the object of his love as a sign and
token of kindliness inspired by affection, since he knows such
ministry is free from all compulsion. Whilst to the tyrant, the
confidence that he is loved is quite foreclosed. On the contrary,[47]
we know for certain that service rendered through terror will
stimulate as far as possible the ministrations of affection. And it is
a fact, that plots and conspiracies against despotic rulers are
oftenest hatched by those who most of all pretend to love them.[48]
[43] "The 'innere Unterhaltung'"; the {oarismos}. Cf. Milton, "P. L.":
With thee conversing, I forget all time.
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