| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: "By the Broken Lock that freed me!" said the Black Panther at
last. "Art THOU the naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all
was young? Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes, speak
for me--speak for Baloo--speak for us all! We are cubs before
thee! Snapped twigs under foot! Fawns that have lost their doe!"
The idea of Bagheera being a stray fawn upset Mowgli altogether,
and he laughed and caught his breath, and sobbed and laughed
again, till he had to jump into a pool to make himself stop.
Then he swam round and round, ducking in and out of the bars of
the moonlight like the frog, his namesake.
By this time Hathi and his three sons had turned, each to one
 The Second Jungle Book |
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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all, half
the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it.
Call it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it
injures no one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly
forfeited, and he must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea
in its defence.
The arguments pleading for it with Lily were the old unanswerable
ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of
failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the
selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that
she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake
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