| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: "I hate it worse and worse every day!" cried Randolph.
"You are like the infant Hannibal," said Winterbourne.
"No, I ain't!" Randolph declared at a venture.
"You are not much like an infant," said his mother. "But we have
seen places," she resumed, "that I should put a long way before Rome."
And in reply to Winterbourne's interrogation, "There's Zurich,"
she concluded, "I think Zurich is lovely; and we hadn't heard half
so much about it."
"The best place we've seen is the City of Richmond!" said Randolph.
"He means the ship," his mother explained. "We crossed in that ship.
Randolph had a good time on the City of Richmond."
|
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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: call it now--goes down before them. Babylon itself goes down, after
that world-famed siege which ended in Belshazzar's feast; and when
Cyrus died--still in the prime of life, the legends seem to say--he
left a coherent and well-organised empire, which stretched from the
Mediterranean to Hindostan.
So runs the tale, which to me, I confess, sounds probable and
rational enough. It may not do so to you; for it has not to many
learned men. They are inclined to "relegate it into the region of
myth;" in plain English, to call old Herodotus a liar, or at least a
dupe. What means those wise men can have at this distance of more
than 2000 years, of knowing more about the matter than Herodotus,
|