| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the
best place for a dry cellar), so that there be no access on that
side to citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at
most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me
to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that
ever human art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should
certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all
your labors, citizens, for me!
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward
dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In
 Walking |
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 Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: any uniform scheme here and there upon the walls. A striking
feature of the decorations consisted of several engaged columns
set into the walls at no regular intervals, the capitals of
each supporting a human skull the cranium of which touched the
ceiling, as though the latter was supported by these grim
reminders either of departed relatives or of some hideous tribal
rite--Bradley could not but wonder which.
Yet it was none of these things that filled him with greatest
wonder--no, it was the figures of the two creatures that had
captured him and brought him hither. At one end of the room a
stout pole about two inches in diameter ran horizontally from
 Out of Time's Abyss |