| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: Liverpool.
However, I am thankful to say she arrived;
and, after laying up at Liverpool very ill for two or
three weeks, gradually recovered.
It was not until we stepped upon the shore at
Liverpool that we were free from every slavish
fear.
We raised our thankful hearts to Heaven, and
could have knelt down, like the Neapolitan exiles,
and kissed the soil; for we felt that from slavery
"Heaven sure had kept this spot of earth uncurs'd,
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: lively discussion with the man in charge, the representative of the
building firm that had undertaken his work. He had found himself
quite "standing up" to this personage over a failure on the
latter's part to observe some detail of one of their noted
conditions, and had so lucidly argued his case that, besides ever
so prettily flushing, at the time, for sympathy in his triumph, she
had afterwards said to him (though to a slightly greater effect of
irony) that he had clearly for too many years neglected a real
gift. If he had but stayed at home he would have anticipated the
inventor of the sky-scraper. If he had but stayed at home he would
have discovered his genius in time really to start some new variety
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