| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: what so feeble-minded a woman as Jemima did not fear, could not
properly be a subject of apprehension to a person of firmness and
resolution like her own.
In a few moments the thoughts of both were diverted from their
own situation by a strain of music so singularly sweet and solemn
that, while it seemed calculated to avert or dispel any feeling
unconnected with its harmony, increased, at the same time, the
solemn excitation which the preceding interview was calculated to
produce. The music was that of some instrument with which they
were unacquainted; but circumstances afterwards led my ancestress
to believe that it was that of the harmonica, which she heard at
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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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: her husband asked her what was the matter.
"Oh, I don't know exactly," she said. "I was thinking
that perhaps it would ha' been better if Tess had not
gone."
"Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before?"
"Well, 'tis a chance for the maid ---- Still, if 'twere
the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till I had found
out whether the gentleman is really a good-hearted
young man and choice over her as his kinswoman."
"Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that," snored Sir
John.
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |