| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: But I think yoh're a just man," looking keenly in Holmes's face.
"A hard one, people say," said Holmes, after a pause, as they
walked on.
He had spoken half to himself, and received no answer. Some
blacker shadow troubled him than old Yare's fate.
"My mother was a hard woman,--you knew her?" he said, abruptly.
"She was just, like yoh. She was one o' th' elect, she said.
Mercy's fur them,--an' outside, justice. It's a narrer showin',
I'm thinkin'."
"My father was outside," said Holmes, some old bitterness rising
up in his tone, his gray eye lighting with some unrevenged wrong.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.
THRENOS.
Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
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