| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: of iron, the place was, but some one had told him
it was called Berlin. Then they rang a bell, and
another steam-machine came in, and again he was
taken on and on through a land that wearied his
eyes by its flatness without a single bit of a hill to
be seen anywhere. One more night he spent shut
up in a building like a good stable with a litter of
straw on the floor, guarding his bundle amongst a
lot of men, of whom not one could understand a
single word he said. In the morning they were all
led down to the stony shores of an extremely broad
 Amy Foster |
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 The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: prisoner. He was followed by the executioner, by the
soldiers who were to form the guard round the scaffold, and
by some curious hangers-on of the prison.
Cornelius, without showing any weakness, but likewise
without any bravado, received them rather as friends than as
persecutors, and quietly submitted to all those preparations
which these men were obliged to make in performance of their
duty.
Then, casting a glance into the yard through the narrow
iron-barred window of his cell, he perceived the scaffold,
and, at twenty paces distant from it, the gibbet, from
 The Black Tulip |