| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she earned five-pence. Her
husband, a cabinetmaker, made four francs a day at his trade; but as
they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface
myself in these poor people's merry-making.
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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 Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is,
anyhow, being young and comparitive innocent.
So I sneaks back in and sets all the flatirons in the
house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some flop-
ping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's
corpse is trying to jump up and is falling back into
the water, and I hearn Hank's voice, and got
scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down
the road, she seen me by the gate a-crying, and she
asts me why.
"Hank is a corpse," says I, blubbering.
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