| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: say in my presence that I desire my beloved, whom I value above all men, to
perish.
I saw that they were getting exasperated with one another, so I made a joke
with him and said: O Ctesippus, I think that we must allow the strangers
to use language in their own way, and not quarrel with them about words,
but be thankful for what they give us. If they know how to destroy men in
such a way as to make good and sensible men out of bad and foolish ones--
whether this is a discovery of their own, or whether they have learned from
some one else this new sort of death and destruction which enables them to
get rid of a bad man and turn him into a good one--if they know this (and
they do know this--at any rate they said just now that this was the secret
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: breadth escape. A German blacksmith whom I knew well was on the
train with me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought
he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I really
believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate,
he saw me escaping and held his peace.
The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most,
was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steam-boat
for Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest,
but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful Delaware,
speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon,
I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New York. He directed me
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