| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of
the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales
from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm
bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow
ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex
lege naturae jure meritoque." I submitted all this to my friends
Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine
in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons
set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted
Moby Dick |
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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: Monday came, clear and blue and stifling. The waves of hot air
danced on the sands and adown the one street merrily. Glassily
calm lay the Pontchartrain, heavily still hung the atmosphere.
Madame Alvarez cast an inquiring glance toward the sky.
Grandpere Colomes chuckled. He had not lived on the shores of
the treacherous Lake Pontchartrain for nothing. He knew its
every mood, its petulances and passions; he knew this glassy
warmth and what it meant. Chuckling again and again, he stepped
to the gallery and looked out over the lake, and at the pier,
where lay the boats rocking and idly tugging at their moorings.
La Juanita in her rose-scented room tied the pink ribbons on her
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
