| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: dignity of the Cross-Keys Square, and the Trotters for the
vicinity of St. Bartholomew's.
Thus is this little territory torn by factions and internal
dissensions, like the great empire who name it bears; and what
will be the result would puzzle the apothecary himself, with all
his talent at prognostics, to determine; though I apprehend that
it will terminate in the total downfall of genuine John Bullism.
The immediate effects are extremely unpleasant to me.
Being a single man, and, as I observed before, rather an idle
good-for-nothing personage, I have been considered the only
gentleman by profession in the place. I stand therefore in high
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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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: with a cold precision unmodified by shade or colour, and
refracted, as it were, from the blank walls of the surrounding
limitations: she had opened windows from which no sky was ever
visible. But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must
employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot
stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate
her case than to put it plainly to herself. Once confronted with
it, however, she went the full length of its consequences; and
these had never been more clearly present to her than when, the
next afternoon, she set out for a walk with Rosedale.
It was one of those still November days when the air is haunted
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