| 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: the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne
had ground on doggedly at his engineering till, with a suddenness
that still made her blink, the prodigious windfall of the Blue
Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession of life and the
leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant their new
state to be one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves
only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of painting
and gardening (against a background of gray walls), he dreamed of
the production of his long-planned book on the "Economic Basis of
Culture"; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence could
be too sequestered; they could not get far enough from the world,
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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 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: hour after hour, tossing to and fro, with incoherent words on her
lips, or sank into a heavy sleep which brought her no refreshment.
Dr. Bangs came twice a day, Hannah sat up at night, Meg kept a
telegram in her desk all ready to send off at any minute, and Jo
never stirred from Beth's side.
The first of December was a wintry day indeed to them, for a
bitter wind blew, snow fell fast, and the year seemed getting ready
for its death. When Dr. Bangs came that morning, he looked long at
Beth, held the hot hand in both his own for a minute, and laid it
gently down, saying, in a low voice to Hannah, "If Mrs. March can
leave her husband she'd better be sent for."
Little Women |
