| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: "Sister," said Lady Bothwell, "if you are determined upon this
wild step, you shall not go alone. If this man be an impostor,
you may be too much agitated by your feelings to detect his
villainy. If, which I cannot believe, there be any truth in what
he pretends, you shall not be exposed alone to a communication of
so extraordinary a nature. I will go with you, if indeed you
determine to go. But yet reconsider your project, and renounce
inquiries which cannot be prosecuted without guilt, and perhaps
without danger."
Lady Forester threw herself into her sister's arms, and, clasping
her to her bosom, thanked her a hundred times for the offer of
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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 The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: his good looks, I should have liked to have a woman's opinion on
that subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the
same effect on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though
scarcely pretty, female face would on a man. I have mentioned
his dark locks--they were brushed sideways above a white and
sufficiently expansive forehead; his cheek had a rather hectic
freshness; his features might have done well on canvas, but
indifferently in marble: they were plastic; character had set a
stamp upon each; expression re-cast them at her pleasure, and
strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a
morose bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more
 The Professor |