| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: subject seemed to have annoyed him.
For the third time--it was after supper--Chichikov returned to the
charge by remarking:
"To-day, as I was walking round your property, I could not help
thinking that marriage would do you a great deal of good. Otherwise
you will develop into a hypochondriac."
Whether Chichikov's words now voiced sufficiently the note of
persuasion, or whether Tientietnikov happened, at the moment, to be
unusually disposed to frankness, at all events the young landowner
sighed, and then responded as he expelled a puff of tobacco smoke:
"To attain anything, Paul Ivanovitch, one needs to have been born
 Dead Souls |
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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: tage could be laid over with concrete . . . after
to-morrow.
"We may just as well do away with the fence.
You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of
your flowers." He winked, and she would blush
faintly.
This madness that had entered her life through
the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable de-
tails. What if some day his son returned? But
she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a
son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too
 To-morrow |