| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: out of their clutches before now. But the other side of the
world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he could
not have waited for it; his need had been too sharp. If he had
to choose over again, he would do the same thing tomorrow. He
looked affectionately about the dining room, now gilded with a
soft mist. Ah, it had paid indeed!
Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his
head and feet. He had thrown himself across the bed without
undressing, and had slept with his shoes on. His limbs and hands
were lead heavy, and his tongue and throat were parched and
burnt. There came upon him one of those fateful attacks of
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: colors of the pipe. On the desk, a little heap of ashes showed that
the night before Schmucke had bestrode the old instrument to some
musical Walhalla. The floor, covered with dried mud, torn papers,
tobacco-dust, fragments indescribable, was like that of a boy's
school-room, unswept for a week, on which a mound of things
accumulate, half rags, half filth.
A more practised eye than that of the countess would have seen certain
other revelations of Schmucke's mode of life,--chestnut-peels, apple-
parings, egg-shells dyed red in broken dishes smeared with sauer-
kraut. This German detritus formed a carpet of dusty filth which
crackled under foot, joining company near the hearth with a mass of
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