| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: and went merrily away down stream.
I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to
which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I
still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away with my heels as
fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight,
to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets. You can
never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against
a man. Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last
ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray. And still
I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on
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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 Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: the forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals a conflict in
progress in my soul between the laws of society and of nature. I
cannot tell whether nature in me is the stronger of the two, but I
surprise myself in the act of meditating between the hostile powers.
In plain words, what I wanted was to speak with Felipe, alone, at
night, under the lime-trees at the bottom of our garden. There is no
denying that this desire beseems the girl who has earned the epithet
of an "up-to-date young lady," bestowed on me by the Duchess in jest,
and which my father has approved.
Yet to me there seems a method in this madness. I should recompense
Felipe for the long nights he has passed under my window, at the same
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