| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: must be beautiful; but I don't know how long they last
nor what they look like when they have done flowering.
This I shall find out in a week or two, I suppose. Was ever
a would-be gardener left so entirely to his own blundering?
No doubt it would be a gain of years to the garden if I
were not forced to learn solely by my failures, and if I
had some kind creature to tell me when to do things.
At present the only flowers in the garden are the rockets,
the pansies in the rose beds, and two groups of azaleas--
mollis and pontica. The azaleas have been and still are gorgeous;
I only planted them this spring and they almost at once
 Elizabeth and her German Garden |
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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: a long time ahead, she might marry. There wasn't much reason
for it, but it might be she would not wish to be called a
spinster. "Take a husband," thought old Grammont, "when I am
gone, as one takes a butler, to make the household complete."
In previous meditations on his daughter's outlook old
Grammont had found much that was very suggestive in the
precedent of Queen Victoria. She had had no husband of the
lord and master type, so to speak, but only a Prince Consort,
well in hand. Why shouldn't the Grammont heiress dominate her
male belonging, if it came to that, in the same fashion? Why
shouldn't one tie her up and tie the whole thing up, so far
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