| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the benefit. Her
eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of happiness
gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped my hands in
hers, and said, in a choking voice:
"Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you never lose her
whom you love."
She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a
dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look
fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of letters. There is
no need to tell you how the next day went. I spent several hours
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: a street like this.
Mr. Howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate
photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and
sentiment, photographs taken in a dream, one might say.
As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I
would try, if I had the words that might approximately reach up
to its high place. I do not think any one else can play with
humorous fancies so gracefully and delicately and deliciously as
he does, nor has so many to play with, nor can come so near
making them look as if they were doing the playing themselves and
he was not aware that they were at it. For they are unobtrusive,
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: nerves had got pretty straight again; but I was full of wrath when I
thought of all that I had gone through at the hands, or rather noses, of
those four brutes, and of the fate of my after-ox Kaptein. He was a
splendid ox, and I was very fond of him. So wroth was I that like a
fool I determined to attack the whole family of them. It was worthy of
a greenhorn out on his first hunting trip; but I did it nevertheless.
Accordingly after breakfast, having rubbed some oil upon my leg, which
was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not
half like the business, and having armed myself with an ordinary double
No. 12 smoothbore, the first breechloader I ever had, I started. I took
the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has
Long Odds |
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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: and turned to the task of setting up exchanges with the minds
of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and futures. It
sought likewise to fathom the past years and origin of that black,
aeon-dead orb in far space whence its own mental heritage had
come - for the mind of the Great Race was older than its bodily
form.
The beings of a dying elder world, wise with the ultimate
secrets, had looked ahead for a new world and species wherein
they might have long life; and had sent their minds en masse into
that future race best adapted to house them - the cone-shaped
beings that peopled our earth a billion years ago.
Shadow out of Time |
