| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by
the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that
surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above
while another primitive forest rots below--such a town is fitted
to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers
for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and
the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating
locusts and wild honey.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a
forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A
hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our
 Walking |
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 Mother by Owen Wister: Beverly's mother got some, and all your hesitation fled. And now I see
that the Gulf, Galveston, and Little Rock is going to build a branch that
may make Philippi a perfectly evaporated town. If you sold these bonds
to-day, how much would you lose?'"
"I did not enjoy telling Ethel how much, but I had to. 'Only fifteen
thousand dollars,' I said."
"'Only!' said Ethel. 'Well, I hope his mother will lose a great deal
more than that.'"
"It is seldom that Ethel taps her foot, but she had begun to tap it now;
and this inclined me to avoid any attempt at a soothing reply, in the
hope that silence might prove still more soothing, and that thus we might
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