| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: trout were very hungry.
One day, when we were paddling home to our tents among the birch
trees, one of these unexpected storms came up; and Patrick,
thoughtful of my comfort as ever, insisted on giving me his coat to
put around my dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead
of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As
I slipped the garment over my back, something hard fell from one of
the pockets into the bottom of the canoe. It was a brier-wood pipe.
"Aha! Pat," I cried; "what is this? You said you had thrown all
your pipes away. How does this come in your pocket?"
"But, m'sieu'," he answered, "this is different. This is not the
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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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: their term of punishment elsewhere. Dr. Stuebel did not seek to
conceal his incredulity; but he took ground beyond; he declared the
point irrelevant. The law was to be enforced. The men were
condemned to a certain period in Weber's prison; they had run away;
they must now be brought back and (whatever had become of them in
the interval) work out the sentence. Doubtless Dr. Stuebel's
demands were substantially just; but doubtless also they bore from
the outside a great appearance of harshness; and when the king
submitted, the murmurs of the people increased.
But Weber was not yet content. The law had to be enforced;
property, or at least the property of the firm, must be respected.
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