| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: after a while they learned to look for that little scene, and to
take it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing.
Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandoned
flowery farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, and
to eye Terry with a sort of envy.
This morning Orville Platt did not even falter when he reached
Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily
ahead, the heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had
stopped--though she knew he wouldn't--Terry Platt would not have
seen him. She remained seated at the disordered breakfast table,
a dreadfully still figure, and sinister; a figure of stone and
One Basket |
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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: she should let such material miseries add to her depression ....
She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi
drove to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was
just one o'clock and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for
though London was empty that great establishment was not. It
never was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted halls, in that
great flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a come-
and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, having
nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from one
end of the earth to the other.
Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew,
|
