| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: and newspapers and magazines filled up with advertisements of
them!"
"And don't forget the wastes of fraud," put in young Fisher.
"When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,"
responded Schliemann--"the science of persuading people to buy
what they do not want--he is in the very center of the ghastly
charnel house of capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely
knows which of a dozen horrors to point out first. But consider
the waste in time and energy incidental to making ten thousand
varieties of a thing for purposes of ostentation and
snobbishness, where one variety would do for use! Consider all
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: soapstones, just as the dots on those insane five-pointed grave
mounds might have been made; and he might conceivably have prepared
rough, hasty sketches - varying in their accuracy or lack of it
- which outlined the neighboring parts of the city and traced
the way from a circularly represented place outside our previous
route - a place we identified as a great cylindrical tower in
the carvings and as a vast circular gulf glimpsed in our aerial
survey - to the present five-pointed structure and the tunnel
mouth therein.
He might, I repeat, have prepared such sketches;
for those before us were quite obviously compiled, as our own
At the Mountains of Madness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: looking in his face. "Suppose, now, you get the money yourself,
and save me the trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it
over to me, you'll not refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me:
it was your brotherly love made you do it, you know."
Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. "Don't come near me
with that look, else I'll knock you down."
"Oh no, you won't," said Dunsey, turning away on his heel,
however. "Because I'm such a good-natured brother, you know.
I might get you turned out of house and home, and cut off with a
shilling any day. I might tell the Squire how his handsome son was
married to that nice young woman, Molly Farren, and was very unhappy
Silas Marner |
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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: order to keep his word came, before he had well done dinner, to
visit the duchess, who, finding enjoyment in listening to him, made
him sit down beside her on a low seat, though Sancho, out of pure good
breeding, wanted not to sit down; the duchess, however, told him he
was to sit down as governor and talk as squire, as in both respects he
was worthy of even the chair of the Cid Ruy Diaz the Campeador. Sancho
shrugged his shoulders, obeyed, and sat down, and all the duchess's
damsels and duennas gathered round him, waiting in profound silence to
hear what he would say. It was the duchess, however, who spoke
first, saying:
"Now that we are alone, and that there is nobody here to overhear
Don Quixote |
