The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They told me
when I started, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few
days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days had
passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as
cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough
to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity,
redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and
ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed
another point against her. What the devil was the good of a she-
ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few necessaries? I
saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I should have to
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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 Hiero by Xenophon: While of tyrants, many have been murderers of their own children, many
by their children murdered. Many brothers have been murderers of one
another in contest for the crown;[11] many a monarch has been done to
death by the wife of his bosom,[12] or even by his own familiar
friend, by him of whose affection he was proudest.[13]
[10] Or, "that these more obvious affections are the sanctities of
private life."
[11] Or, "have caught at the throats of brothers"; lit. "been slain
with mutually-murderous hand." Cf. Pind. Fr. 137; Aesch. "Sept. c.
Theb." 931; "Ag." 1575, concerning Eteocles and Polynices.
[12] See Grote, "H. G." xi. 288, xii. 6; "Hell." VI. iv. 36; Isocr.
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