| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: keeping up her Peace-cry, under penalty of death.
3. Any Female, duly certified to be suffering from St. Vitus's Dance,
fits, chronic cold accompanied by violent sneezing, or any disease
necessitating involuntary motions, shall be instantly destroyed.
In some of the States there is an additional Law forbidding Females,
under penalty of death, from walking or standing in any public place
without moving their backs constantly from right to left
so as to indicate their presence to those behind them;
others oblige a Woman, when travelling, to be followed by one
of her sons, or servants, or by her husband; others confine Women
altogether to their houses except during the religious festivals.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: It would be well not to lose time in preparing her for the worst.
But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it.
For on entering he found that Dover's agent had already put a man
in the house, and when he asked where Mrs. Lydgate was, he was told
that she was in her bedroom. He went up and found her stretched
on the bed pale and silent, without an answer even in her face
to any word or look of his. He sat down by the bed and leaning
over her said with almost a cry of prayer--
"Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond! Let us only love
one another."
She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face;
Middlemarch |
