| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: of forgotten interests revived in me. It seemed, after all,
so natural to be walking along a barbed-wire fence beside the sunset,
toward a red pond, and to see my shadow moving along at my right,
over the close-cropped grass.
`Has mother shown you the pictures you sent her from the old country?'
Ambrosch asked. `We've had them framed and they're hung up in the parlour.
She was so glad to get them. I don't believe I ever saw her so pleased
about anything.' There was a note of simple gratitude in his voice that made
me wish I had given more occasion for it.
I put my hand on his shoulder. `Your mother, you know,
was very much loved by all of us. She was a beautiful girl.'
 My Antonia |
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 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: between the manuscript and the document."
I admitted that this was a strictly logical conclusion.
"I am therefore led to imagine," continued my uncle, "that some
possessor of this book wrote these mysterious letters. But who was
that possessor? Is his name nowhere to be found in the manuscript?"
My uncle raised his spectacles, took up a strong lens, and carefully
examined the blank pages of the book. On the front of the second, the
title-page, he noticed a sort of stain which looked like an ink blot.
But in looking at it very closely he thought he could distinguish
some half-effaced letters. My uncle at once fastened upon this as the
centre of interest, and he laboured at that blot, until by the help
 Journey to the Center of the Earth |