The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: the considerable array of rather unattenuated surprises attending
his so strangely belated return to America. Everything was somehow
a surprise; and that might be natural when one had so long and so
consistently neglected everything, taken pains to give surprises so
much margin for play. He had given them more than thirty years -
thirty-three, to be exact; and they now seemed to him to have
organised their performance quite on the scale of that licence. He
had been twenty-three on leaving New York - he was fifty-six to-
day; unless indeed he were to reckon as he had sometimes, since his
repatriation, found himself feeling; in which case he would have
lived longer than is often allotted to man. It would have taken 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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: came over the sun, and long, snakelike shadows crept up along the
mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its
descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden height of the dead
air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw
the cataract of the Golden River springing from the hillside
scarcely five hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to
breathe, and sprang on to complete his task.
At this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He turned, and
saw a gray-haired old man extended on the rocks. His eyes were
sunk, his features deadly pale and gathered into an expression of
despair. "Water!" he stretched his arms to Hans, and cried
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