| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: monstrous volumes to their singing, something perhaps
borrowed from the text, some subtle differentiation from the
cut that went before and the cut that follows after -
something, at least, speaks clearly of a fearful joy, of
Heaven seen from the deathbed, of the horror of the last
passage no less than of the glorious coming home. There is
that in the action of one of them which always reminds me,
with a difference, of that haunting last glimpse of Thomas
Idle, travelling to Tyburn in the cart. Next come the
Shining Ones, wooden and trivial enough; the pilgrims pass
into the river; the blot already mentioned settles over and
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: "Though he claims not to be foolish like Mr. Donohoe. Why, Mr. McLean,
you surely must have been young once! See if you can't remember!"
"Shucks!" began Lin.
But her laughter routed him. "Maybe you didn't notice you were young,"
she said. "But don't you reckon perhaps the men around did? Why, maybe
even the girls kind o' did!"
"She's hard to beat, ain't she?" inquired Lin, admiringly, of me.
In my opinion she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found
him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say
good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and
repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said
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