| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: which roads are the arms and legs--a trivial or quadrivial place,
the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers. The word is from the
Latin villa which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved
and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa
is the place to and from which things are carried. They who got
their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too,
the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests
what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn
by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling
themselves.
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk
 Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: From the air of hushed fright at Osborn's store they knew something
hideous had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of
the Elmer Frye house and family. Throughout that afternoon they
rode around Dunwich, questioning the natives concerning all that
had occurred, and seeing for themselves with rising pangs of horror
the drear Frye ruins with their lingering traces of the tarry
stickiness, the blasphemous tracks in the Frye yard, the wounded
Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous swaths of disturbed vegetation
in various places. The trail up and down Sentinel Hill seemed
to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance, and he looked
long at the sinister altar-like stone on the summit.
 The Dunwich Horror |