| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: it down at a door near by, and walk away, saying, with a kind
nod and a foreign accent, "It goes better so. The little back
is too young to haf such heaviness."
Wasn't it good of him? I like such things, for as Father
says, trifles show character. When I mentioned it to Mrs. K.,
that evening, she laughed, and said, "That must have been
Professor Bhaer, he's always doing things of that sort."
Mrs. K. told me he was from Berlin, very learned and good,
but poor as a church mouse, and gives lessons to support himself
and two little orphan nephews whom he is educating here, according
to the wishes of his sister, who married an American. Not
 Little Women |
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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: much more than she had taken from him. He argued with her again,
told her she could now have the altar to herself; but she only
shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to waste his
breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn't he see that in
relation to her private need the rites he had established were
practically an elaborate exclusion? She regretted nothing that had
happened; it had all been right so long as she didn't know, and it
was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment their
eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had doubtless
been happiness enough for them to go on together so long. She was
gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a deep
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