| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: They began to weep and their curses struggled in their throats with
sobs. The other little boys clasped their hands and wriggled their
legs in excitement. They formed a bobbing circle about the pair.
A tiny spectator was suddenly agitated.
"Cheese it, Jimmie, cheese it! Here comes yer fader," he yelled.
The circle of little boys instantly parted. They drew away
and waited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen.
The two little boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago,
did not hear the warning.
Up the avenue there plodded slowly a man with sullen eyes.
He was carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple-wood pipe.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: enemy. Fabu threatened to ring his neck, although he was not cruelly
inclined, notwithstanding his big whiskers and tattooings. On the
contrary, he rather liked the bird, and, out of devilry, tried to
teach him oaths. Felicite, whom his manner alarmed, put Loulou in the
kitchen, took off his chain and let him walk all over the house.
When he went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted his
right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that such
feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to eat.
There was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens are
sometimes afflicted with. Felicite pulled it off with her nails and
cured him. One day, Paul was imprudent enough to blow the smoke of his
A Simple Soul |
