| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: crowding memories, of confusion and despair and even actual danger.
And out of that, what?
Habit. That was all he had to depend on. The brain was a thing
of habits, like the body; right could be a habit, and so could
evil. As a man thought, so he was. For all of his childhood, and
for the last ten years, Dick's mental habits had been right; his
environment had been love, his teaching responsibility. Even if
the door opened, then, there was only the evil thinking of two or
three reckless years to combat, and the door might never open.
Happiness, Lauler had said, would keep it closed, and Dick was happy.
When at five o'clock the nurse came in with a thermometer he was
The Breaking Point |
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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: Gaudissart the illustrious has his star, but NOT his Waterloo. I
triumph everywhere. Life insurance has done well. Between Paris
and Blois I lodged two millions. But as I get to the centre of
France heads become infinitely harder and millions correspondingly
scarce. The article Paris keeps up its own little jog-trot. It is
a ring on the finger. With all my well-known cunning I spit these
shop-keepers like larks. I got off one hundred and sixty-two
Ternaux shawls at Orleans. I am sure I don't know what they will
do with them, unless they return them to the backs of the sheep.
"As to the article journal--the devil! that's a horse of another
color. Holy saints! how one has to warble before you can teach
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