| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: hundred dollars to Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts
scattered about Paris, I awoke one morning with a horrid
sentiment of oppression, and found I was alone: my vanity had
breathed her last during the night. I dared not plunge deeper in
the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned myself
beaten at last; and sitting down in my nightshirt beside the
window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner
of the boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell
agreeably upon my ear, I penned my farewell to Paris, to art, to
my whole past life, and my whole former self. "I give in," I
wrote. "When the next allowance arrives, I shall go straight
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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: (Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!'
(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely).
All together rang their voices,
Angry, loud, discordant voices,
As of dogs that howl in concert,
As of cats that wail in chorus.
But my Hiawatha's patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished,
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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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: state of preservation - opening off on every side.
The walls,
or such parts of them as lay within reach of my torchlight, were
densely hieroglyphed and chiselled with typical curvilinear symbols
- some added since the period of my dreams.
This, I realised,
was my fated destination, and I turned at once through a familiar
archway on my left. That I could find a clear passage up and down
the incline to all the surviving levels, I had, oddly, little
doubt. This vast, earth-protected pile, housing the annals of
all the solar system, had been built with supernal skill and strength
Shadow out of Time |
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 Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: her by patting her hand.
We got out at M-, a small place with two or three houses and a
general store. The station was a one-roomed affair, with a
railed-off place at the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument
and a chair constituted the entire furnishing.
The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped
hammering a piece of wood over a hole in the floor to ask where we
wanted to go.
"We're not going," said McKnight, "we're coming. Have a cigar?"
The agent took it with an inquiring glance, first at it and then
at us.
The Man in Lower Ten |
