| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes,
would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?
Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility
that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?
Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all
the real ones you fly from--will you risk the commission of so
fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union if all Constitutional rights
can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written
in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human
mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And, pitying, you may turn your view
On that poor father whom you never knew.
Alas! alone he sits, who then,
Immortal among mortal men,
Sat hand in hand with love, and all day through
With your dear mother wondered over you.
OVER THE LAND IS APRIL
OVER the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
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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 Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: intelligible, its corrupt motive being as clear as the motive of a
burglar for concealing his jemmy from a policeman. But the other
great suppression in our schools, the suppression of the subject of
sex, is a case of taboo. In mankind, the lower the type, and the less
cultivated the mind, the less courage there is to face important
subjects objectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people
continually discuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened
interest. Commoner and less cultivated people, even when they form
societies for discussion, make a rule that politics and religion are
not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person
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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 The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: and began: "My name is Roswell. I have been recently admitted
to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success
in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall
look down from the lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall
ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity,
and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be
called from its buried GREATNESS." The Major grasped him by the hand,
and exclaimed: "O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame
of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare
of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede
your progress!"
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