| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: God that I can't expect ever to be forgiven. I have come to
know what it is to have patience, but I have lost my hope. You
must tell those that ask how 'tis with me,' she said, 'an' tell
them I want to be alone.' I couldn't speak; no, there wa'n't
anything I could say, she seemed so above everything common. I was
a good deal younger then than I be now, and I got Nathan's little
coral pin out o' my pocket and put it into her hand; and when she
saw it and I told her where it come from, her face did really light
up for a minute, sort of bright an' pleasant. 'Nathan an' I was
always good friends; I'm glad he don't think hard of me,' says she.
'I want you to have it, Almiry, an' wear it for love o' both o'
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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 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there,
she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.
There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had
not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for
the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came
within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its in-
fluence, the tender heart became stone, and the
lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like
fierceness. The first step in her downward course was
in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced
 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |