| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: "Martha," I says, "I like you more'n any girl
I ever run acrost before."
She says, "Thank you," agin. The way she
said it riled me up. She said it like she didn't
know what I meant, nor what I was trying to get
out of me. But she did know all the time. I
knowed she did. She knowed I knowed it, too.
Gosh-dern it, I says to myself, here I am wasting
all this time jest TALKING to her. The right thing
to do come to me all of a sudden, and like to took
my breath away. But I done it. I grabbed her
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: spurted out with violence against the opposite wall.
Hans, almost thrown off his feet by the violence of the shock,
uttered a cry of grief and disappointment, of which I soon under-.
stood the cause, when plunging my hands into the spouting torrent, I
withdrew them in haste, for the water was scalding hot.
"The water is at the boiling point," I cried.
"Well, never mind, let it cool," my uncle replied.
The tunnel was filling with steam, whilst a stream was forming, which
by degrees wandered away into subterranean windings, and soon we had
the satisfaction of swallowing our first draught.
Could anything be more delicious than the sensation that our burning
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: wading over the knees for shells; I have been five hours on
horseback: I have been up pretty near all night waiting to see
where the CASCO would go ashore, and with my diary all ready -
simply the most entertaining night of my life. Withal I still have
colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at
home: instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment
sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as
for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than
the berry: only my trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit
retain the vile whiteness of the north.
Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any
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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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: prints like those in Archaean slate, proving that source survived
from over six hundred million years ago to Comanchian times without
more than moderate morphological changes and decrease in average
size. Comanchian prints apparently more primitive or decadent,
if anything, than older ones. Emphasize importance of discovery
in press. Will mean to biology what Einstein has meant to mathematics
and physics. Joins up with my previous work and amplifies conclusions.
"Appears to indicate, as I suspected, that earth has seen whole
cycle or cycles of organic life before known one that begins with
Archaeozoic cells. Was evolved and specialized not later than
a thousand million years ago, when planet was young and recently
At the Mountains of Madness |
