The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN,
WITH OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
CHAPTER I
HOW THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF THE BLACK BROTHERS WAS
INTERFERED WITH BY SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE
In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old
time a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It
was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains rising into
peaks which were always covered with snow and from which a number of
torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell
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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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: happiness of early married life. And, in fact, from the month of
April, when they were married, till the beginning of winter, the
husband and wife lived in perfect union. Love and hard work have the
grace of making a man tolerably indifferent to external matters. Being
obliged to spend half the day in court fighting for the gravest
interests of men's lives or fortunes, Granville was less alive than
another might have been to certain facts in his household.
If, on a Friday, he found none but Lenten fare, and by chance asked
for a dish of meat without getting it, his wife, forbidden by the
Gospel to tell a lie, could still, by such subterfuges as are
permissible in the interests of religion, cloak what was premeditated
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