| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed into theirs.
It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot with them over the
foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers that made them call again and
again for payment.
To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than myself through
a kind of intoxication of the intellectual faculties, and to play this
game at will, such was my recreation. Whence comes the gift? Is it a
kind of second sight? Is it one of those powers which when abused end
in madness? I have never tried to discover its source; I possess it, I
use it, that is all. But this it behooves you to know, that in those
days I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People
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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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: had hardly moved at all.
I could not have been in that cabin more than
two minutes altogether. Say three. . . . So
he could not have been watching me more than a
mere fraction of a minute, luckily. Still, I re-
gretted the occurrence.
But I showed nothing of it as I rose leisurely (it
had to be leisurely) and greeted him with perfect
friendliness.
There was something reluctant and at the same
time attentive in his bearing. His name was
 The Shadow Line |