| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: yourself; but Ferrier was above me, we were not equals; his true
self humoured and smiled paternally upon my failings, even as I
humoured and sorrowed over his.
Well, first his mother, then himself, they are gone: 'in their
resting graves.'
When I come to think of it, I do not know what I said to his
sister, and I fear to try again. Could you send her this? There
is too much both about yourself and me in it; but that, if you do
not mind, is but a mark of sincerity. It would let her know how
entirely, in the mind of (I suppose) his oldest friend, the good,
true Ferrier obliterates the memory of the other, who was only his
|
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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: That afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought
in their tools and made two great wooden shovels with long handles.
Neither grandmother nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed
the chickens and brought in a pitiful contribution of eggs.
Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn--
and the snow was still falling! There had not been such a
storm in the ten years my grandfather had lived in Nebraska.
He said at dinner that we would not try to reach the cattle--
they were fat enough to go without their corn for a day or two;
but tomorrow we must feed them and thaw out their water-tap so that they
could drink. We could not so much as see the corrals, but we knew
My Antonia |
