| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: according to New York standards. These things I thought over while she
was in Florida; yet when once I should I find myself with her again, I
began to fear that I could not hold myself from--but these are
circumstances which universal knowledge renders it needless to mention,
and I will pass to the second perturbation."
"A sum of money was suddenly left me. Then for the first time I understood
why I had during my boyhood been so periodically sent to see a cross old
brother of my mother's, who lived near Cold Spring on the Hudson, and
whom we called Uncle Snaggletooth when no one could hear us. Uncle
Godfrey (for I have called him by his right name ever since) died and left
me what in those old days six years ago was still a large amount. To-day
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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 Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: as they listen to this divine outpouring of the heart.
On returning home I went to bed, but only to count the steps which
resounded on the sidewalk. My heart and head, darling, are all on fire
now. What is he doing? What is he thinking of? Has he a thought, a
single thought, that is not of me? Is he, in very truth, the devoted
slave he painted himself? How to be sure? Or, again, has it ever
entered his head that, if I accept him, I lay myself open to the
shadow of a reproach or am in any sense rewarding or thanking him? I
am harrowed by the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in /Cyrus/
and /Astraea/, by all the subtle arguments of the court of love.
Has he any idea that, in affairs of love, a woman's most trifling
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