| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: of an hour, to the railway in the Pusterthal, I walked up over the
mountains to the east, across the Platzwiesen, and so down through
the Pragserthal. In one arm of the deep fir-clad vale are the
Baths of Alt-Prags, famous for having cured the Countess of Gorz of
a violent rheumatism in the fifteenth century. It is an antiquated
establishment, and the guests, who were walking about in the fields
or drinking their coffee in the balcony, had a fifteenth century
look about them--venerable but slightly ruinous. But perhaps that
was merely a rheumatic result.
All the waggons in the place were engaged. It is strange what an
aggravating effect this state of affairs has upon a pedestrian who
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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