| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at
her parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the
graves of victims of the plague.
"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently
priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every
where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently
and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there
in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just
self-indulgence!"
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her
whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
 War and Peace |
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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one full of dill pickles,
one full of chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds.
`You wouldn't believe, Jim, what it takes to feed them all!'
their mother exclaimed. `You ought to see the bread we bake on
Wednesdays and Saturdays! It's no wonder their poor papa can't
get rich, he has to buy so much sugar for us to preserve with.
We have our own wheat ground for flour--but then there's that much
less to sell.'
Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out to me
the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but, glancing at me,
traced on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherries
 My Antonia |