| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: The doctor seemed delighted to see our guest; they were
evidently the warmest friends, and I saw a look of affectionate
confidence in their eyes. The good man left his carriage to speak
to us, but as he took Mrs. Blackett's hand he held it a moment,
and, as if merely from force of habit, felt her pulse as they
talked; then to my delight he gave the firm old wrist a commending
pat.
"You're wearing well; good for another ten years at this
rate," he assured her cheerfully, and she smiled back. "I like to
keep a strict account of my old stand-bys," and he turned to me.
"Don't you let Mrs. Todd overdo to-day,--old folks like her are apt
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: present to the eye. There, in those dismal regions, is neither
coolness nor brightness, nor shade nor contrast,--none of all those
ideas and spectacles of Nature which awaken and rejoice the heart;
even a stunted apple-tree would be hailed as a friend.
A country road, recently made, runs through the centre of this great
plain, and meets the high-road. Upon it, at a distance of some fifteen
miles from the high-road, stands Montegnac, at the foot of a hill, as
its name designates, the chief town of a canton or district in the
Haute-Vienne. The hill is part of Montegnac, which thus unites a
mountainous scenery with that of the plains. This district is a
miniature Scotland, with its lowlands and highlands. Behind the hill,
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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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;
Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl
Disordered in the body and confound
By tumult and confusion all the sense-
As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand
Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.
On which account, the elemental forms
Must differ widely, as enabled thus
To cause diverse sensations.
And, again,
What seems to us the hardened and condensed
Of The Nature of Things |
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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: the very place of the worship had terrified the squatters more
than the shocking sounds and incidents.
Only poetry or madness
could do justice to the noises heard by Legrasse's men as they
ploughed on through the black morass toward the red glare and
muffled tom-toms. There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and
vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear
the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and
orgiastic license here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights
by howls and squawking ecstacies that tore and reverberated through
those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs
Call of Cthulhu |
