| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: they was little ones."
"Can't the little fellow's leg be straightened?" asked Babcock, in
a tone which plainly showed his sympathy for the boy's suffering.
"No, not now; so Dr. Mason says. There was a time when it might
have been, but I couldn't take him. I had him over to Quarantine
again two years ago, but it was too late; it'd growed fast, they
said. When he was four years old he would be under the horses'
heels all the time, and a-climbin' over them in the stable, and
one day the Big Gray fetched him a crack, and broke his hip. He
didn't mean it, for he's as dacint a horse as I've got; but the
boys had been a-worritin' him, and he let drive, thinkin', most
|
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 Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: was not so, the cook had detected the happiness, but did not know
the cause. When Halliday found the duplicate ecstasy in the face of
"Shadbelly" Billson (village nickname), he was sure some neighbour
of Billson's had broken his leg, but inquiry showed that this had
not happened. The subdued ecstasy in Gregory Yates's face could
mean but one thing--he was a mother-in-law short; it was another
mistake. "And Pinkerton--Pinkerton--he has collected ten cents that
he thought he was going to lose." And so on, and so on. In some
cases the guesses had to remain in doubt, in the others they proved
distinct errors. In the end Halliday said to himself, "Anyway it
roots up that there's nineteen Hadleyburg families temporarily in
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
