The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks;
From his sleepless bed uprising,
From the bed of Minnehaha,
Stood and watched it at the doorway,
That it might not be extinguished,
Might not leave her in the darkness.
"Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha!
Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!
Come not back again to labor,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: America, and in France more than once--all have become the
voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one
man can improve his circumstances for him.
But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the
slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion--and in what baser and uglier
circumstances could human being find himself?--to find out the
secret of being truly free; namely, to be discontented with no man
and no thing save himself. To say not--"Oh that I had this and
that!" but "Oh that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help--
and that heroic slave, heathen though he was, believed and trusted
in God's help--"I will make myself that which God has shown me
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