| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: dowered him with a queer, crooked gift of expression and a fierce
anxiety for the welfare of his two little sons--tanned and
reserved children, who attended school daily and spoke good
English in a strange tongue.
His wife was an austere woman, who had once been kindly, and
perhaps handsome.
Very many years of toil had taken the elasticity out of step and
voice. She looked for nothing better than everlasting work--the
chafing detail of housework--and then a grave somewhere up the
hill among the blackberries and the pines.
But in her grim way she sympathized with her eldest daughter, a
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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 Astoria by Washington Irving: feast of fish, of beaver, and venison, which relished well with
men who had so long been glad to revel on horse flesh and dogs'
meat; a genial allowance of grog was issued, to increase the
general animation, and the festivities wound up, as usual, with a
grand dance at night, by the Canadian voyageurs. *
*The distance from St. Louis to Astoria, by the route travelled
by Hunt and M'Kenzie, was upwards of thirty-five hundred miles,
though in a direct line it does not exceed eighteen hundred.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Scanty Fare During the Winter.- A Poor Hunting Ground.- The
Return of the Fishing Season.- The Uthlecan or Smelt.- Its
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