| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him,
and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must,
but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up
the "combination." The burglars killed him.
The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved
to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and
orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged
that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation
of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming
forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family,
now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting
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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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: When I asked how much the estate amounted to, Rudolph said it
was a little over a hundred thousand dollars.
Cuzak gave me a twinkling, sidelong glance. `The lawyers,
they got a good deal of it, sure,' he said merrily.
A hundred thousand dollars; so that was the fortune that had been
scraped together by such hard dealing, and that Cutter himself
had died for in the end!
After supper Cuzak and I took a stroll in the orchard and sat
down by the windmill to smoke. He told me his story as if it
were my business to know it.
His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and he,
My Antonia |
