| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: tractors they scratched the ground with a wooden stick, and when
the crop failed they starved to death by millions. With our steel
ships we send bread to China to save them. If they had the wit to
use their resources they could save themselves. In man's fight
against the hostile forces of nature, his safety lies in applying
his wit to the resources that nature gave him. The Americans can
do that. There are others that can not.
I was riding on a train in Indiana when a gypsy-looking youth
came in and sat beside me. His hair was black, his skin was
yellow and he was dressed in flashy American clothes. He had a
cock-sure air about him that attracted my attention. I have
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: carriage and their expulsion from it.
At first de Sucy took the hand of the young countess, as if to show
her his affection, and the grief he felt at seeing her reduced to such
utter misery; then he grew silent; seated beside her on a heap of snow
which was turning into a rivulet as it melted, he yielded himself up
to the happiness of being warm, forgetting their peril, forgetting all
things. His face assumed, in spite of himself, an expression of almost
stupid joy, and he waited with impatience until the fragment of the
mare given to his orderly was cooked. The smell of the roasting flesh
increased his hunger, and his hunger silenced his heart, his courage,
and his love. He looked, without anger, at the results of the pillage
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