| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made
a better one myself. - I really do not know where my head can have
been. I seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be
man. - 'Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically
unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in
frivolous circles.
To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed
I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards
him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my
reader: - if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of
mine.
|
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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: me your servant, take all my property, and give it away to any
one you like. I am at peace, Natalie, I am content. . . . I am at
peace."
My wife, looking intently and with curiosity into my face,
suddenly uttered a faint cry, burst into tears, and ran into the
next room. I went upstairs to my own storey.
An hour later I was sitting at my table, writing my "History of
Railways," and the starving peasants did not now hinder me from
doing so. Now I feel no uneasiness. Neither the scenes of
disorder which I saw when I went the round of the huts at
Pestrovo with my wife and Sobol the other day, nor malignant
|
