| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: evidently been crying. Pemberton quickly learned however that her
grief was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usually
enjoyed it, but the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, as she
made all haste to explain. He would see for himself, so far as
that went, how the great change had come, the dreadful bolt had
fallen, and how they would now all have to turn themselves about.
Therefore cruel as it was to them to part with their darling she
must look to him to carry a little further the influence he had so
fortunately acquired with the boy - to induce his young charge to
follow him into some modest retreat. They depended on him - that
was the fact - to take their delightful child temporarily under his
|
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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-
merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well
matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a
sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don't
amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and
emptying their pockets.
This madness of our epoch reacted upon the illustrious Gaudissart, and
here follows the history of how it happened. A life-insurance company
having been told of his irresistible eloquence offered him an unheard-
of commission, which he graciously accepted. The bargain concluded and
the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say
|