| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: other line who wanted a bill paid, that I felt I had been guilty of
brutality. And all the while the quality of his wonderful output
never changed or abated. Pure and firm and prismatic it remained.
I found him one day at the very end of October, with shining eyes
and fingers blue with cold, putting the last of the afternoon light
on the snows into one of the most dramatic hill pictures I ever knew
him to do. He seemed intoxicated with his skill, and hummed the
'Marseillaise,' I remember, all the way to Amy Villa whither I
accompanied him.
It was the last day of Kauffer's contract; and besides, all the
world, secretaries, establishments, hill captains, grass widows,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather as
there is no early independent testimony by which they are supported or with
which they can be compared.
IV. There is another subject to which I must briefly call attention, lest
I should seem to have overlooked it. Dr. Henry Jackson, of Trinity
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: There's an example in Themistocles:
He went away to Persia, and fared well.
BURR
So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so?
I had not planned it so. Is this the road
I take? If so, farewell.
HAMILTON
Quite so. Farewell.
John Brown
Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: neighbors, the Bradleys, will want your help for a day or two,
after getting home."
"It is less than death," Jonathan answered, "and why should it seem
to be more? We must think of father and mother, and all those
twelve years; now I know what the burden was."
"And we have never really borne any part of it! Father must have
been right in forcing us to promise."
Every day the discussion was resumed, and always with the same
termination. Familiarity with the inevitable step gave them
increase of courage; yet, when the moment had come and gone, when,
speeding on opposite trains, the hills and valleys multiplied
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