| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: dollars.
"You see, sir," added the latter to me, "he bet you were a
musician; I bet you weren't. No offence, I hope?"
"None whatever," I said, and the two withdrew to the bar, where I
presume the debt was liquidated.
This little adventure woke bright hopes in my fellow-travellers,
who thought they had now come to a country where situations went a-
begging. But I am not so sure that the offer was in good faith.
Indeed, I am more than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide
the bet.
Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, for the best of all
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: paying for their board. It was Mrs. Ballinger's boast that she
was "abreast with the Thought of the Day," and her pride that
this advanced position should be expressed by the books on her
drawing-room table. These volumes, frequently renewed, and
almost always damp from the press, bore names generally
unfamiliar to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively
scanned them, a disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge
to be breathlessly traversed in Mrs. Ballinger's wake. But to-
day a number of maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled
with the primeurs of the press--Karl Marx jostled Professor
Bergson, and the "Confessions of St. Augustine" lay beside the
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