| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: river and cast it off. "Good-bye, old top!" he whispered.
A moment later he had rejoined the girl and hand in hand they
were following the dark corridor upstream toward the farther end
of the city. She told him that the Wieroos seldom frequented
these lower passages, as the air here was too chill for them; but
occasionally they came, and as they could see quite as well by
night as by day, they would be sure to discover Bradley and the girl.
"If they come close enough," she said, "we can see their eyes
shining in the dark--they resemble dull splotches of light.
They glow, but do not blaze like the eyes of the tiger or the lion."
The man could not but note the very evident horror with which she
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: don't see how you're going to get bolshevism, when all the lads want is
just money to enjoy themselves, and the girls the same, with fine
clothes: and they don't care about another thing. They haven't the
brains to be socialists. They haven't enough seriousness to take
anything really serious, and they never will have.'
Connie thought, how extremely like all the rest of the classes the
lower classes sounded. Just the same thing over again, Tevershall or
Mayfair or Kensington. There was only one class nowadays: moneyboys.
The moneyboy and the moneygirl, the only difference was how much you'd
got, and how much you wanted.
Under Mrs Bolton's influence, Clifford began to take a new interest in
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: down by the roadside to consider my situation under the cheerful
influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. Modestine, in the
meanwhile, munched some black bread with a contrite hypocritical
air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to the gods of
shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk; I
threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general
average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away
the cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was
dear to my heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket,
and even stowed the boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of
cord I slung it under one arm; and although the cord cut my
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: like a peasant himself, as he questioned Macalister about the eleven
ships that had been driven into the bay in a storm. Three had sunk.
He looked proudly where Macalister pointed; and Cam thought, feeling
proud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there he would have
launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck, Cam thought.
He was so brave, he was so adventurous, Cam thought. But she
remembered. There was the conpact; to resist tyranny to the death.
Their grievance weighed them down. They had been forced; they had been
bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloom and his
authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning, come,
because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Lighthouse; take
To the Lighthouse |
