| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: silence as of a neatly executed crime, characterise
this murderous disaster, which, as you may remem-
ber, had its gruesome celebrity. The wind would
have prevented the loudest outcries from reaching
the shore; there had been evidently no time for sig-
nals of distress. It was death without any sort of
fuss. The Hamburg ship, filling all at once, cap-
sized as she sank, and at daylight there was not
even the end of a spar to be seen above water. She
was missed, of course, and at first the Coastguard-
men surmised that she had either dragged her an-
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a
big automobile and worked out an improvement in the
transmission that settled the question of heavy draft
machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he
took it to a man that had money. Between the two of
'em, they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to
put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire.
God, I was crazy----"
He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep
breath.
"They put it on the market all right and they made
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: There is an air of finality about a grave: one watches the earth
thrown in, with the feeling that this is the end. Whatever has
gone before, whatever is to come in eternity, that particular
temple of the soul has been given back to the elements from which
it came. Thus, there is a sense of desecration, of a reversal of
the everlasting fitness of things, in resurrecting a body from
its mother clay. And yet that night, in the Casanova churchyard,
I sat quietly by, and watched Alex and Mr. Jamieson steaming over
their work, without a single qualm, except the fear of detection.
The doctor kept a keen lookout, but no one appeared. Once in a
while he came over to me, and gave me a reassuring pat on the
The Circular Staircase |
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 Camille by Alexandre Dumas: clung about the doorway of this uninhabited house, mounting as
high as the first story.
I looked at the house so long that I began by thinking of it as
mine, so perfectly did it embody the dream that I was dreaming; I
saw Marguerite and myself there, by day in the little wood that
covered the hillside, in the evening seated on the grass, and I
asked myself if earthly creatures had ever been so happy as we
should be.
"What a pretty house!" Marguerite said to me, as she followed the
direction of my gaze and perhaps of my thought.
"Where?" asked Prudence.
Camille |
