| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: his shop. Here they stood upon no ceremony, although the saloons were
full of those very aristocrats before whom, in any other place, they
would have been ready to sweep, with reverence, the dust brought in by
their feet. They were quite at their ease, handling pictures and books
without ceremony, when desirous of ascertaining the value of the
goods, and boldly upsetting bargains mentally secured in advance by
noble connoisseurs. There were many of those infallible attendants of
auctions who make it a point to go to one every day as regularly as to
take their breakfast; aristocratic connoisseurs who look upon it as
their duty not to miss any opportunity of adding to their collections,
and who have no other occupation between twelve o'clock and one; and
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: becomes what Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river--a liquid
artifice--a wretched conduit." But take away the water from the
most beautiful river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with
none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on the bosom of the earth.
The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the
union of soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong
together. They act and react upon each other. The stream moulds
and makes the shore; hollowing out a bay here, and building a long
point there; alluring the little bushes close to its side, and
bending the tall slim trees over its current; sweeping a rocky
ledge clean of everything but moss, and sending a still lagoon full
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