| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: While lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's
ear, "against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle
of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and
assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear,
as his eyes were suddenly caught and riveted by a portrait of an
old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the
seventeenth century.
"There she is!" he exclaimed--"there she is, in form and
features, though Inferior in demoniac expression to the accursed
hag who visited me last night!"
"If that be the case," said the young nobleman, "there can remain
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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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: ending of his interview should doubtless have delighted him. But
for all that, as he shouldered the bag of money and set forward to
rejoin his groom, he was conscious of many aching sensibilities. To
have gone wrong and to have been set right makes but a double trial
for man's vanity. The discovery of his own weakness and possible
unfaith had staggered him to the heart; and to hear, in the same
hour, of his wife's fidelity from one who loved her not, increased
the bitterness of the surprise.
He was about half-way between the fountain and the Flying Mercury
before his thoughts began to be clear; and he was surprised to find
them resentful. He paused in a kind of temper, and struck with his
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