| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: its larger population and its ambition as the new State capital,
Springfield was at that time in many ways no great improvement
upon New Salem. It had no public buildings, its streets and
sidewalks were still unpaved, and business of all kinds was
laboring under the burden of hard times.
As for himself, although he now owned a license to practise law,
it was still a question how well he would succeed--whether his
rugged mind and firm purpose could win him the livelihood he
desired, or whether, after all, he would be forced to turn his
strong muscles to account in earning his daily bread. Usually so
hopeful, there were times when he was greatly depressed. His
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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 Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: has married hundreds of couples: couples selected by one another,
couples selected by the parents, couples forced to marry one another
by circumstances of one kind or another; and he assures me that if
marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and
the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a
blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a
percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said
Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I
think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else.
Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the
slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married
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