| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like
the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to
the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take
them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here before Thee carry
and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own
eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same
time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our
integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up
and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of
him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
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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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: ever imagined in parable. Besides, Rosario had a plain strain of
what we call 'the country' in him, a plain strain, that is, of the
colour of the country. It was certainly the first time in my
official career that I had been mistaken for Rosario.
Armour turned round and saw me--that I was a stranger.
He got up at once. 'Oh,' he said, 'I thought it was Rosario.
'It isn't,' I replied, 'my name is Philips. May I ask whether you
were expecting Mr. Rosario? I can come again, you know.'
'Oh, it doesn't matter. Sit down. He may drop in or he may not--I
rather thought he would today. It's a pull up, isn't it, from the
Mall? Have a whisky and soda.'
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