| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: November 22, 1993, on the day of the 30th anniversary
of his assassination.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
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Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: On the world we suddenly are thrown;
Hundred thousand billows round us sport;
All things charm us--many please alone,
Many grieve us, and as hour on hour is stealing,
To and fro our restless natures sway;
First we feel, and then we find each feeling
By the changeful world-stream borne away.
Well I know, we oft within us find
Many a hope and many a smart.
Charlotte, who can know our mind?
Charlotte, who can know our heart?
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: were continuously reinforced. In three successive charges,
cheering as they ran, the blue-jackets burst through their
scattered opponents, and made good their junction with Jaeckel.
Four men only remained upon the field, the other wounded being
helped by their comrades or dragging themselves painfully along.
The force was now concentrated in the house and its immediate patch
of garden. Their rear, to the seaward, was unmolested; but on
three sides they were beleaguered. On the left, the Samoans
occupied and fired from some of the plantation offices. In front,
a long rising crest of land in the horse-pasture commanded the
house, and was lined with the assailants. And on the right, the
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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 A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: in silver upon his left arm, and playing with all his might the
family march, entitled "The Campbells are coming," approached to
conduct the envoy of Montrose to the castle of Ardenvohr. The
distance between the galley and the beach was so short as scarce
to require the assistance of the eight sturdy rowers, in bonnets,
short coats, and trews, whose efforts sent the boat to the little
creek in which they usually landed, before one could have
conceived that it had left the side of the birling. Two of the
boatmen, in spite of Dalgetty's resistance, horsed the Captain on
the back of a third Highlander, and, wading through the surf with
him, landed him high and dry upon the beach beneath the castle
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