| 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.: the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I
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
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: before is plunged down again among the fogs and complications
of duty. And this is all the more overwhelming because
Whitman insists not only on love between sex and sex, and
between friends of the same sex, but in the field of the less
intense political sympathies; and his ideal man must not only
be a generous friend but a conscientious voter into the
bargain.
His method somewhat lessens the difficulty. He is not, the
reader will remember, to tell us how good we ought to be, but
to remind us how good we are. He is to encourage us to be
free and kind, by proving that we are free and kind already.
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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 At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Since the sun neither rises nor sets there is no method
of indicating direction beyond visible objects such as
high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas.
The plain which lies beyond the white cliffs which flank
the Darel Az upon the shore nearest the Mountains
of the Clouds is about as near to any direction as any
Pellucidarian can come. If you happen not to have heard
of the Darel Az, or the white cliffs, or the Mountains
of the Clouds you feel that there is something lacking,
and long for the good old understandable northeast
and southwest of the outer world.
At the Earth's Core |
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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: unless averted, might fix upon the real offender. In the very
presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should
free himself at the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose
character he had at once a contempt and a repugnance. It is not
probable, be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of
involving Clifford in a charge of murder. Knowing that his uncle
did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the
hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn. But,
when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey's previous steps
had already pledged him to those which remained. So craftily had
he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford's trial, his cousin
House of Seven Gables |
