The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: of thirty-three the Comte de Manerville seemed to be a man of forty,
that change in his appearance was due solely to mental shocks;
physically, he was well. He clasped the old man's hand affectionately,
and forced him not to rise, saying:--
"Dear, kind Maitre Mathias, you, too, have had your troubles."
"Mine were natural troubles, Monsieur le comte; but yours--"
"We will talk of that presently, while we sup."
"If I had not a son in the magistracy, and a daughter married," said
the good old man, "you would have found in old Mathias, believe me,
Monsieur le comte, something better than mere hospitality. Why have
you come to Bordeaux at the very moment when posters are on all the
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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 The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: the end of that time you'd made a profit of ninepence.
While you were doing up the parcel, some fellow walked off
with a book worth eighteen-pence. It was too slow for me.
I didn't hit it off with the old man, either. We didn't
precisely quarrel, but I went off on my own hook.
I hung about London for some years, trying this thing
and that. Once I started a book-shop of my own--but I
did no good here. Finally I turned it up altogether,
and went to Australia. That was in 1882. I've been
in almost every quarter of the globe since; I've known
what it was to be shipwrecked in a monsoon, and I've
 The Market-Place |