| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy
orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh!
ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!"
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health
is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are
|
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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: quickly forgotten.
"And then," added the merry Frenchman, "I am not sorry to have
tasted a little of this heady gas. Do you know, my friends,
that a curious establishment might be founded with rooms of
oxygen, where people whose system is weakened could for a few
hours live a more active life. Fancy parties where the room was
saturated with this heroic fluid, theaters where it should be
kept at high pressure; what passion in the souls of the actors
and spectators! what fire, what enthusiasm! And if, instead of
an assembly only a whole people could be saturated, what activity
in its functions, what a supplement to life it would derive.
 From the Earth to the Moon |