| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the
burdens of others.
Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and
tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a
floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old
Jerome's money in a state of high commotion. But at this point
complications must be introduced.
Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a
brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody
else's fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had
a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that
Options |
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 1984 by George Orwell: stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain.
It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the
glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded
with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances.
The dream had also been comprehended by--indeed, in some sense it had
consisted in--a gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again
thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film,
trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets, before the helicopter
blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered
my mother?'
1984 |
