| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: and never regained. But even youth itself was not to be compared
with the exquisite felicity of being deeply and desperately in love
with Sheila, the clear-eyed heroine of that charming book. In this
innocent passion my gray-haired comrades, Howard Crosby, the
Chancellor of the University of New York, and my father, an ex-
Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, were ardent but
generous rivals.
How great is the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an
ethereal affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the
conscience. It is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its
dregs. It spends the present moment with a free hand, and yet
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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 A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: peculiarities of Paris that one really does not know how the time
goes. Life is so alarmingly rapid. I kiss the mother and you and
David more tenderly than ever."
The name of Flicoteaux is engraved on many memories. Few indeed were
the students who lived in the Latin Quarter during the last twelve
years of the Restoration and did not frequent that temple sacred to
hunger and impecuniosity. There a dinner of three courses, with a
quarter bottle of wine or a bottle of beer, could be had for eighteen
sous; or for twenty-two sous the quarter bottle becomes a bottle.
Flicoteaux, that friend of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a
colossal fortune but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which
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