| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: sons. It forbids devotion to women, courts of love and all such
decay of the chivala closely-written
memorandum, very much erased and written over and amended, which
showed Benham's early dissatisfaction with that crude rendering of
what he had in mind. This memorandum was tacked to an interrupted
fragment of autobiography, a manuscript soliloquy in which Benham
had been discussing his married life.
"It was not until I had been married for the better part of a year,
and had spent more than six months in London, that I faced the plain
issue between the aims I had set before myself and the claims and
immediate necessities of my personal life. For all that time I
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: me speak so loud;" asking me "whether the king or queen of that
country were thick of hearing?" I told him, "it was what I had
been used to for above two years past, and that I admired as much
at the voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to
whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough. But, when I
spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the streets,
to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I
was placed on a table, or held in any person's hand." I told
him, "I had likewise observed another thing, that, when I first
got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought
they were the most little contemptible creatures I had ever
Gulliver's Travels |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: by the professor were, of course, strong corroboration; but the
rationalism of my mind and the extravagance of the whole subject
led me to adopt what I thought the most sensible conclusions.
So, after thoroughly studying the manuscript again and correlating
the theosophical and anthropological notes with the cult narrative
of Legrasse, I made a trip to Providence to see the sculptor and
give him the rebuke I thought proper for so boldly imposing upon
a learned and aged man.
Wilcox still lived alone in the Fleur-de-Lys
Building in Thomas Street, a hideous Victorian imitation of seventeenth
century Breton Architecture which flaunts its stuccoed front amidst
Call of Cthulhu |
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 Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: steel and the shrieks of rage and agony. Presently I found myself
mixed up with the remnants of the square, which had formed round
its leader Good, and was fighting desperately for existence.
I stumbled against somebody, and glancing down, caught sight
of Good's eyeglass. He had been beaten to his knee. Over him
was a great fellow swinging a heavy sword. Somehow I managed
to run the man through with the sime I had taken from the Masai
whose hand I had cut off; but as I did so, he dealt me a frightful
blow on the left side and breast with the sword, and though my
chain shirt saved my life, I felt that I was badly hurt. For
a minute I fell on to my hands and knees among the dead and dying,
Allan Quatermain |
