| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: given her the smallest reason to suspect his hidden flame;
and he was therefore perfectly free to turn his back upon her--
he could never incur the reproach of trifling with her affections.
Bernard was in that state of mind when it is the greatest of
blessings to be saved the distress of choice--to see a straight
path before you and to feel that you have only to follow it.
Upon the straight path I have indicated, he fixed his eyes very hard;
of course he would take his departure at the earliest possible hour
on the morrow. There was a streak of morning in the eastern sky
by the time he knocked for re-admittance at the door of the inn,
which was opened to him by a mysterious old woman in a nightcap
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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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
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