| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: "What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?
He never knows what is in my mind--he never cares. What is the use
of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me."
She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one
who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance
all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.
And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude--how they walked apart so that she was obliged
to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have
surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would
have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly,
Middlemarch |
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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: communicated your remarks. . . . He is a far better and more
interesting thing than any of his books.
The Elephant was my wife's; so she is proportionately elate you
should have picked it out for praise - from a collection, let me
add, so replete with the highest qualities of art.
My wicked carcase, as John Knox calls it, holds together
wonderfully. In addition to many other things, and a volume of
travel, I find I have written, since December, 90 CORNHILL pages of
magazine work - essays and stories: 40,000 words, and I am none
the worse - I am the better. I begin to hope I may, if not outlive
this wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like
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