| 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: improving; that it would be a good thing if a window were
opened on these close privacies of life; that on this
subject, as on all others, he now and then lets fall a
pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel that he
was not the man for so difficult an enterprise. He loses our
sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting too much of
our attention in that of a Bull in a China Shop. And where,
by a little more art, we might have been solemnised
ourselves, it is too often Whitman alone who is solemn in the
face of an audience somewhat indecorously amused.
VI.
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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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard: him."
"If you mean Mr. Marnham," I replied, lifting my hat, "I believe
that Dr. Rodd and he--"
"Never mind about Dr. Rodd," she broke in with a contemptuous
little jerk of her chin," how is my father?"
"I imagine much as usual. He and Dr. Rodd were here a little
while ago, I suppose that they have gone out" (as a matter of
fact they had, but in different directions).
"Then that's all right," she said with a sigh of relief. "You
see, I heard that he was very ill, which is why I have come
back."
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