| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: steps instinctively offers his arm to yonder poverty stricken
widow in the rusty black bonnet, and with a check apron over her
patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole earthly stay, was
washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palace
and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who
represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the
upper parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and
its own humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and
the monarch, will waive their pretensions to external rank
without the officiousness of interference on our part. If
pride--the influence of the world's false distinctions--remain in
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: art. Promoters did not even publish the gigantic prospectuses with
which they stimulate the imagination, and at the same time make
demands for money of all and sundry."
"That only comes when nobody wishes to part with money," said Couture.
"In short, there was no competition in investments," continued Bixiou.
"Paper-mache manufacturers, cotton printers, zinc-rollers, theatres,
and newspapers as yet did not hurl themselves like hunting dogs upon
their quarry--the expiring shareholder. 'Nice things in shares,' as
Couture says, put thus artlessly before the public, and backed up by
the opinions of experts ('the princes of science'), were negotiated
shamefacedly in the silence and shadow of the Bourse. Lynx-eyed
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