| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up
at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when
it was gone."
"Into the tunnel?" said I.
"No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and
held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured
distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and
trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run
in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I
looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up
the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: I mean a man of sense;
And if the house is not too new - "
"Why, what has THAT," said I, "to do
With Ghost's convenience?"
"A new house does not suit, you know -
It's such a job to trim it:
But, after twenty years or so,
The wainscotings begin to go,
So twenty is the limit."
"To trim" was not a phrase I could
Remember having heard:
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: image. The thing had been remarked with petulant jealousy by his
wife, and she regarded her husband's absorbing devotion to the
child with suspicion and dislike; all that was given to her seemed
so much taken from herself. From the time of the birth of this
child, her health gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction,
bodily and mental,--the friction of ceaseless ennui and discontent,
united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of
maternity,--in course of a few years changed the blooming young
belle into a yellow faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided
among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself,
in every sense, the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: of the Seeonee Pack. On such nights runs he to and fro."
"Uhh!" said the cow, dropping her head again to graze,
"I thought it was Man."
"I say no. Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?" lowed Mysa.
"Oh, Mowgli, is it danger?" the boy called back mockingly.
"That is all Mysa thinks for: Is it danger? But for Mowgli,
who goes to and fro in the Jungle by night, watching, what
do ye care?"
"How loud he cries!" said the cow. "Thus do they cry," Mysa
answered contemptuously, "who, having torn up the grass,
know not how to eat it."
The Second Jungle Book |
