| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: novel relish--Thorpe took somewhat less gloomy views
of his position. He still walked eastward, wandering into
warehouse and shipping quarters skirting the river,
hitherto quite unknown to him, and pursuing in an idle,
inconsequent fashion his meditations. He established in
his mind the proposition that since an excess of enjoyment
was impossible--since one could not derive a great block
of happiness from the satisfaction of the ordinary appetites,
but at the most could only gather a little from each--the
desirable thing was to multiply as much as might be those
tastes and whims and fancies which passed for appetites,
The Market-Place |
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 Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: "I ask my lord to give me, placed upon a charger, the head of--" She
hesitated, as if not certain of the name; then said: "The head of
Iaokanann!"
The tetrarch sank back in his chair as if stunned.
He had bound himself by his promise to her; and the people awaited his
next movement. But the death that night of some conspicuous man that
had been predicted to him by Phanuel,--what if, by bringing it upon
another, he could avert it from himself, thought Antipas. If Iaokanann
was in very truth the Elias so much talked of, he would have power to
protect himself; and if he were only an ordinary man, his murder was
of no importance.
Herodias |
