| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: grass of the field; and in June, 1770, the Resident at the Durbar
affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead. Day and night
a torrent of famished and disease-stricken wretches poured into
the great cities. At an early period of the year pestilence had
broken out. In March we find small-pox at Moorshedabad, where it
glided through the vice-regal mutes, and cut off the Prince Syfut
in his palace. The streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps
of the dying and dead. Interment could not do its work quick
enough; even the dogs and jackals, the public scavengers of the
East, became unable to accomplish their revolting work, and the
multitude of mangled and festering corpses at length threatened
 The Unseen World and Other Essays |
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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: thought which will annihilate you. Last evening, at sunset, I had that
sensation; and it exhausted me."
"Oh! let us talk, let us talk," she said, after a long pause. "I
understand it. No orator was ever more terrible. I think," she
continued, presently, "that I perceive the causes of the harmonies
which surround us. This landscape, which has but three marked colors,
--the brilliant yellow of the sands, the blue of the sky, the even
green of the sea,--is grand without being savage; it is immense, yet
not a desert; it is monotonous, but it does not weary; it has only
three elements, and yet it is varied."
"Women alone know how to render such impressions," I said. "You would
|