| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: baby's.
"Who's she?" said I. "She'll do."
"That's Uma," said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in
the native. I didn't know what he said; but when he was in the
midst she looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a
blow, then down again, and presently smiled. She had a wide mouth,
the lips and the chin cut like any statue's; and the smile came out
for a moment and was gone. Then she stood with her head bent, and
heard Case to an end, spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice,
looking him full in the face, heard him again in answer, and then
with an obeisance started off. I had just a share of the bow, but
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: remoteness out of all proportion to its geographical position.
But to the Boynes it was one of the ever-recurring wonders of the
whole incredibly compressed island--a nest of counties, as they
put it--that for the production of its effects so little of a
given quality went so far: that so few miles made a distance, and
so short a distance a difference.
"It's that," Ned had once enthusiastically explained, "that gives
such depth to their effects, such relief to their least
contrasts. They've been able to lay the butter so thick on every
exquisite mouthful."
The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray
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