| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: he, who had been so much at his ease with country lasses,
treated the town dames to an extreme of deference. One lady,
who met him at a ball, gave Chambers a speaking sketch of his
demeanour. "His manner was not prepossessing - scarcely, she
thinks, manly or natural. It seemed as if he affected a
rusticity or LANDERTNESS, so that when he said the music was
`bonnie, bonnie,' it was like the expression of a child."
These would be company manners; and doubtless on a slight
degree of intimacy the affectation would grow less. And his
talk to women had always "a turn either to the pathetic or
humorous, which engaged the attention particularly."
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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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
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