| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: his identity. Warren would kill him; but it was not fear of death
that put Cameron on the rack. He had faced death too often to be
afraid. It was the thought of adding torture to this long-suffering
man. All at once Cameron swore that he would not augment Warren's
trouble, or let him stain his hands with blood. He would tell the
truth of Nell's sad story and his own, and make what amends he could.
Then Cameron's thought shifted from father to daughter. She was
somewhere beyond the dim horizon line. In those past lonely hours
by the campfire his fancy had tortured him with pictures of Nell.
But his remorseful and cruel fancy had lied to him. Nell had
struggled upward out of menacing depths. She had reconstructed a
Desert Gold |
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: great houses feted and caressed him. Welcomed, flattered, and fed
wherever he went, it came to pass that to breakfast or to dine alone
was a novelty, an event. He lived the life of a sovereign, or, better
still, of a journalist; in fact, he was the perambulating "feuilleton"
of Parisian commerce.
His name was Gaudissart; and his renown, his vogue, the flatteries
showered upon him, were such as to win for him the surname of
Illustrious. Wherever the fellow went,--behind a counter or before a
bar, into a salon or to the top of a stage-coach, up to a garret or to
dine with a banker,--every one said, the moment they saw him, "Ah!
here comes the illustrious Gaudissart!"[*] No name was ever so in
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