| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: no home so stately along the whole stretch of Cote Joyeuse. Every
one knew that, as they knew it had cost Philippe Valmet sixty
thousand dollars to build, away back in 1840. No one was in danger
of forgetting that fact, so long as his daughter Pelagie survived.
She was a queenly, white-haired woman of fifty. "Ma'ame Pelagie,"
they called her, though she was unmarried, as was her sister
Pauline, a child in Ma'ame Pelagie's eyes; a child of thirty-five.
The two lived alone in a three-roomed cabin, almost within the
shadow of the ruin. They lived for a dream, for Ma'ame Pelagie's
dream, which was to rebuild the old home.
It would be pitiful to tell how their days were spent to
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: conscious that an almost impassable gulf divides his hired
apartment from his former home. "It is but in the next street!"
he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto, he has
put off his return from one particular day to another;
henceforward, he leaves the precise time undetermined. Not
tomorrow--probably next week--pretty soon. Poor man! The dead
have nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as
the self-banished Wakefield.
Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a
dozen pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our
control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and
Twice Told Tales |
