| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: has a native presence of mind.
" 'Yes; you are fresh and good-looking enough never to lack lovers!
But tell me, Rosalie, why did you become an inn-servant on leaving
Madame de Merret? Did she not leave you some little annuity?'
" 'Oh yes, sir. But my place here is the best in all the town of
Vendome.'
"This reply was such an one as judges and attorneys call evasive.
Rosalie, as it seemed to me, held in this romantic affair the place of
the middle square of the chess-board: she was at the very centre of
the interest and of the truth; she appeared to me to be tied into the
knot of it. It was not a case for ordinary love-making; this girl
La Grande Breteche |
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 Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: Schlager's hardware store, and to see the way in which the crowd
stood around it, and streamed across the street toward it, you'd
have thought they were giving away gas stoves and hammock couches.
Going home in the street car after the game the girls used to
gaze adoringly at the dirty faces of their sweat-begrimed heroes,
and then they'd rush home, have supper, change their dresses, do
their hair, and rush downtown past the Parker Hotel to mail their
letters. The baseball boys boarded over at the Griggs House, which
is third-class, but they used their tooth-picks, and held the
postmortem of the day's game out in front of the Parker Hotel,
which is our leading hostelry. The postoffice receipts record for
Buttered Side Down |
