| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: rubbing her furniture. In winter time, the live brands of the fire
smouldered all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in
his grate. He went through his day, from his uprising to his evening
coughing-fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was
a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on
an excursion across your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death;
and in something the same way my acquaintance would stop short in the
middle of a sentence, while a cart went by, to save the strain to his
voice. Following the example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse-
strokes, and concentrated all human sensibility in the innermost
sanctuary of Self.
Gobseck |
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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: in the cold waters of a lagoon on the edge of the town before I'd
cooled off.
"That evening after dark I called at the alcalde's to see Anabela. I
was calling regular every evening then, and we were to be married in a
month. She was looking like a bulbul, a gazelle, and a tea-rose, and
her eyes were as soft and bright as two quarts of cream skimmed off
from the Milky Way. She looked at my rugged features without any
expression of fear or repugnance. Indeed, I fancied that I saw a look
of deep admiration and affection, such as she had cast at Fergus on
the plaza.
"I sat down, and opened my mouth to tell Anabela what she loved to
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