| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: connection with the next day's regular.
The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it
and gringed to the conductor's hat-band slips would never have
recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain
domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public
servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its
windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of
Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy
stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary
comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder's
eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a
 Heart of the West |
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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: I put him upon contradicting me, which did not consist with
good manners, any more than with his affection; and therefore,
since I had insensibly drawn him into this poetical scribble, he
begged I would not oblige him to break it off; so he writes
again--
'Let love alone be our debate.'
I wrote again--
'She loves enough that does not hate.'
This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that
is to say, the pen; I say, he took if for a favour, and a mighty
one it was, if he had known all. However, he took it as I meant
 Moll Flanders |