| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: always promised but never comes?
In the romances which followed, dating from 1888 to 1890, a sort
of calm despair seems to have settled down upon De Maupassant's
attitude toward life. Psychologically acute as ever, and as
perfect in style and sincerity as before, we miss the note of
anger. Fatality is the keynote, and yet, sounding low, we detect
a genuine subtone of sorrow. Was it a prescience of 1893? So much
work to be done, so much work demanded of him, the world of
Paris, in all its brilliant and attractive phases, at his feet,
and yet--inevitable, ever advancing death, with the question of
life still unanswered.
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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 War and the Future by H. G. Wells: have developed. After an advance there is a pause, while the
guns move up nearer the Germans and fresh aeroplane
reconnaissance goes on. Nowhere on this present offensive has a
German counter attack had more than the most incidental success;
and commonly they have had frightful losses. Then after a few
days of refreshment and accumulation, the Allied attack resumes.
That is the perfected method of the French offensive. I had the
pleasure of learning its broad outlines in good company, in the
company of M. Joseph Reinach and Colonel Carence, the military
writer. Their talk together and with me in the various messes at
which we lunched was for the most part a keen discussion of every
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