| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: are very fishy.
'We are silent and shy of one another, and soon go out to watch
while turbaned, blue-breeched, barelegged Arabs dig holes for the
land telegraph posts on the following principle: one man takes a
pick and bangs lazily at the hard earth; when a little is loosened,
his mate with a small spade lifts it on one side; and DA CAPO.
They have regular features and look quite in place among the palms.
Our English workmen screw the earthenware insulators on the posts,
strain the wire, and order Arabs about by the generic term of
Johnny. I find W- has nothing for me to do; and that in fact no
one has anything to do. Some instruments for testing have stuck at
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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 The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the fair qualities
of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman's dreams, a man unspoiled as
yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow selfishness
which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion, self-sacrifice,
and high demands of self; all the flowers so soon wither that enrich
at first the life of delicate but strong emotions, and keep alive the
loyalty of the heart.
But these two, once launched forth into the vast of sentiment, went
far indeed in theory, sounding the depths in either soul, testing the
sincerity of their expressions; only, whereas Gaston's experiments
were made unconsciously, Mme. de Beauseant had a purpose in all that
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