| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: a new resort on the sea coast of New Hampshire. One railway system did
already connect it with both Portsmouth and Portland, but it was not a
very direct connection at present. Yet in spite of this, the population
had increased 23 and seven-tenths per cent in five years, and now an
electric railway was in construction that would double the population in
the next five years. This was less than what had happened to other
neighbouring resorts under identical conditions; yet with things as they
now were, the company was earning two per cent on its stock, which was
being put into improvements. The stock was selling at 30, and if a
dividend was paid next year, it would go to par. But Mr. Beverly did not
counsel buying the stock. 'I did not let mother have any,' he said,
|
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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: Paris on the trucks of costermongers. But at any rate, the landlord
had got his rent and the bailiffs their expenses.
According to the Neapolitan cook--who warmed up for the street-walkers
of the Rue Froid-Manteau the fragments left from the most sumptuous
dinners in Paris--Signora Gambara had gone off to Italy with a
Milanese nobleman, and no one knew what had become of her. Worn out
with fifteen years of misery, she was very likely ruining the Count by
her extravagant luxury, for they were so devotedly adoring, that in
all his life, Giardini could recall no instance of such a passion.
Towards the end of that very January, one evening when Giardini was
chatting with a girl who had come to buy her supper, about the divine
Gambara |
