| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: put it, with a mechanical movement, into a decanter full of water that
was near his plate, and then he turned to Monsieur Hermann and smiled.
After all, that man, now beatified by gastronomical enjoyments, hadn't
probably two ideas in his brain, and was thinking of nothing.
Consequently I felt rather ashamed of wasting my powers of divination
"in anima vili,"--of a doltish financier.
While I was thus making, at a dead loss, these phrenological
observations, the worthy German had lined his nose with a good pinch
of snuff and was now beginning his tale. It would be difficult to
reproduce it in his own language, with his frequent interruptions and
wordy digressions. Therefore, I now write it down in my own way;
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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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: to his unanswered question.
He made the lounge in the big sunny window his headquarters. From
it he could look out on some of the ranch activities when she was
not with him, could watch the line riders as they passed to and
fro and command a view of one of the corrals. There was always,
too, the turquoise sky, out of which poured a flood of light on
the roll of hilltops. Sometimes he read to himself, but he was
still easily tired, and preferred usually to rest. More often she
read aloud to him while he lay back with his leveled eyes gravely
on her till the gentle, cool abstraction she affected was
disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach the intensity
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