| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: harsh to peasants and dependents, and less subject to the fits of
gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood. As to his
wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her
behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her
husband was away on business at Rennes or Morlaix--whither she
was never taken--she was not allowed so much as to walk in the
park unaccompanied. But no one asserted that she was unhappy,
though one servant-woman said she had surprised her crying, and
had heard her say that she was a woman accursed to have no child,
and nothing in life to call her own. But that was a natural
enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and certainly
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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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: the idea that the prince who had the wisdom and authority to make them
had not the power to enforce them; and laws that threaten and are
not enforced come to he like the log, the king of the frogs, that
frightened them at first, but that in time they despised and mounted
upon. Be a father to virtue and a stepfather to vice. Be not always
strict, nor yet always lenient, but observe a mean between these two
extremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the gaols, the
slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the
governor is of great importance in such places; it comforts the
prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release, it is the bugbear of
the butchers who have then to give just weight, and it is the terror
Don Quixote |
