| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: the first hint of it from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse's help,
to get a great many more. Emma assisted with her invention,
memory and taste; and as Harriet wrote a very pretty hand,
it was likely to be an arrangement of the first order, in form
as well as quantity.
Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the girls,
and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in.
"So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young-- he
wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time."
And it always ended in "Kitty, a fair but frozen maid."
His good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject,
 Emma |
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: trawled for cod if he hadn't loved his wife so much; she was a fine
woman, a Brouin of Guerande, with a good heart. She loved Cambremer so
much that she couldn't bear to have her man leave her for longer than
to fish sardine. They lived over there, look!" said the fisherman,
going up a hillock to show us an island in the little Mediterranean
between the dunes where we were walking and the marshes of Guerande.
"You can see the house from here. It belonged to him. Jacquette Brouin
and Cambremer had only one son, a lad they loved--how shall I say?--
well, they loved him like an only child, they were mad about him. How
many times we have seen them at fairs buying all sorts of things to
please him; it was out of all reason the way they indulged him, and so
|