| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: it up, looked at it, and carried it to his wife, who fell down as if
dead, seeing her own writing. Cambremer said nothing, but he went to
Croisic, and heard that his son was in a billiard room; so then he
went to the mistress of the cafe, and said to her:--
"'I told Jacques not to use a piece of gold with which he will pay
you; give it back to me, and I'll give you white money in place of
it.'
"The good woman did as she was told. Cambremer took the money and just
said 'Good,' and then he went home. So far, all the town knows that;
but now comes what I alone know, though others have always had some
suspicion of it. As I say, Cambremer came home; he told his wife to
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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 The Voice of the City by O. Henry: tests about boundary lines and the neighbors' hens.
It is in the cities that our epigram gains in truth and
vigor; and it has remained for one John Hopkins to
crowd the experience into a rather small space of
time.
The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others.
There was a rubber plant in one window; a flea-
bitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when he
was to have his day.
John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He
worked at $20 per week in a nine-story, red-brick
The Voice of the City |
