| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: little "discourse of fish and fishing" which should serve as a
useful manual for quiet persons inclined to follow the contemplative
man's recreation. He came home with a book which has made his name
beloved by ten generations of gentle readers, and given him a secure
place in the Pantheon of letters,--not a haughty eminence, but a
modest niche, all his own, and ever adorned with grateful offerings
of fresh flowers.
This was great luck. But it was well-deserved, and therefore it has
not been grudged or envied.
Walton was a man so peaceful and contented, so friendly in his
disposition, and so innocent in allOne was that sour-complexioned Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck,
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: she could do what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined her
toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb with his name
upon it. (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the future volumes a tomb;
he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But the months gained
on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask
for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp on
Dorothea's life.
The grasp had slipped away. Bound by a pledge given from the
depths of her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking
a toil which her judgment whispered was vain for all uses except
that consecration of faithfulness which is a supreme use. But now
Middlemarch |
