| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: the window, and the position of the door and the staircase made
it impossible that the painter should pass without seeing
Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance of supreme indifference;
but judging of the girl's suffering by his own, he felt an inward
shudder as he reflected on the bitterness which that look and
that coldness must produce in a loving heart. To crown the most
delightful feast which ever brought joy to two pure souls, by
eight days of disdain, of the deepest and most utter contempt!--A
frightful conclusion. And perhaps the purse had been found,
perhaps Adelaide had looked for her friend every evening.
This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh remorse;
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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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: it had belanged to the fairies, we threw it into the bole, and
it has layen there ever since." '
This is for the one; the last shall be a sketch by the
master hand of Scott himself:
`At the village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island,
called Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie
Millie, who helped out her subsistence by selling favourable
winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who
left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to
propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate,
being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and
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