| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: the stable instead of intrusting it to his man Silas.
"You may set in the parlor," said Mrs. Diggs, and departed stiffly with
the basket of trout.
"It's false," said Billy, at once.
Bertie did not grasp his thought.
"Her hair," said Billy. And certainly it was an unusual-looking
arrangement.
Presently, as they sat near a parlor organ in the presence of earnest
family portraits, Bertie made a new poem for Billy,--
"Said Aristotle unto Plato,
'Have another sweet potato? '"
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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 Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: of the pastorate at all hours, the way the priest patted
her on the shoulder before others, the obvious dislike
the priest's ugly old housekeeper bore her, the astonishing
freedom of their talk with each other--these dark
memories loomed forth out of a mass of sinister conjecture.
He could bear the uncertainty no longer. Was it indeed
not entirely his own fault that it had existed thus long?
No man with the spirit of a mouse would have shilly-shallied
in this preposterous fashion, week after week, with the fever
of a beautiful woman's kiss in his blood, and the woman
herself living only round the corner. The whole world
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
