The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: shouldn't like to do that myself,--you might carry your bit o'
dinner there, for it's nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot
of a Sunday, and not to make it as you can't know your dinner from
Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day, this blessed Christmas as is
ever coming, if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go
to church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, and
then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the better, and you'd know
which end you stood on, and you could put your trust i' Them as
knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all
to do."
Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech
Silas Marner |
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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: to have been happy in the possession of so good a man;
but good men are sometimes oppressive, and to have one
in the house with you and to live in the daily glare of his
goodness must be a tremendous business. After bearing him
seven sons and three daughters, therefore, my grandmother
died in the way described, and afforded, said my grandfather,
another and a very curious proof of the impossibility of ever
being sure of your ground with women. The incident faded
more quickly from his mind than it might otherwise have done
for its having occurred simultaneously with the production
of a new kind of potato, of which he was justly proud.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |