| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: face the absolute prohibition of a return to England. The
consideration of climate imposed itself, and he was in no state to
meet it alone. I took him to Meran and there spent the summer with
him, trying to show him by example how to get back to work and
nursing a rage of another sort that I tried NOT to show him.
The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena so
strangely interlaced that, taken together - which was how I had to
take them - they form as good an illustration as I can recall of
the manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate
sometimes deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly
had larger bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: On the first possible day, they applied for passports, and were
advised to take the road to Geneva. It appears it was scarce safe
to leave Paris for England. Charles Reade, with keen dramatic
gusto, had just smuggled himself out of that city in the bottom of
a cab. English gold had been found on the insurgents, the name of
England was in evil odour; and it was thus - for strategic reasons,
so to speak - that Fleeming found himself on the way to that Italy
where he was to complete his education, and for which he cherished
to the end a special kindness.
It was in Genoa they settled; partly for the sake of the captain,
who might there find naval comrades; partly because of the
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