| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: secret pickets and outposts, if only because in supplying a guard to
protect your friends you are contriving an ambuscade to catch the
enemy. Also the outposts will be less exposed to a secret attack,
being themselves unseen, and yet a source of great alarm to the enemy;
since the bare knowledge that there are outposts somewhere, though
where precisely no man knows, will prevent the enemy from feeling
confident, and oblige him to mistrust every tenable position. An
exposed outpost, on the contrary, presents to the broad eye of day its
dangers and also its weaknesses.[16] Besides which, the holder of a
concealed outpost can always place a few exposed vedettes beyond his
hidden pickets, and so endeavour to decoy the enemy into an ambuscade.
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: LABORS ABROAD>A week or two before leaving the United States, I
had a meeting appointed at Weymouth, the home of that glorious
band of true abolitionists, the Weston family, and others. On
attempting to take a seat in the omnibus to that place, I was
told by the driver (and I never shall forget his fiendish hate).
"_I don't allow niggers in here_!" Thank heaven for the respite
I now enjoy! I had been in Dublin but a few days, when a
gentleman of great respectability kindly offered to conduct me
through all the public buildings of that beautiful city; and a
little afterward, I found myself dining with the lord mayor of
Dublin. What a pity there was not some American democratic
 My Bondage and My Freedom |