| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: understand it) should see the fine flower of Kings Port, but also that
the fine flower of Kings Port should see him; the best blood of the South
could not possibly turn out anything better than Beverly Rodgers, and it
was horrible and humiliating to think of the other Northern specimens of
men whom Hortense had imported with her. I was here suddenly reminded
that the young woman was a guest of the Cornerlys, the people who swept
their garden, the people whom Eliza La Heu at the Exchange did not
"know"; and at this the remark of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, when I had
walked with her and Mrs. Weguelin, took on an added lustre of
significance:--
"We shall have to call."
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: the affair of my aunt Dinah touch'd upon, but with the greatest emotion.--
The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his face;--but
when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the
illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,--the
unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the family, would set
my uncle Toby's honour and modesty o'bleeding; and he would often take my
father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell
him, he would give him any thing in the world, only to let the story rest.
My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle Toby,
that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing
in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir'd of another, to
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