| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: Johansen,
thank God, did not know quite all, even though he saw the city
and the Thing, but I shall never sleep calmly again when I think
of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in
space, and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which
dream beneath the sea, known and favoured by a nightmare cult
ready and eager to loose them upon the world whenever another
earthquake shall heave their monstrous stone city again to the
sun and air.
Johansen's voyage had begun just as he told it
to the vice-admiralty. The Emma, in ballast, had cleared Auckland
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: boy,' she continued, turning to me, 'that is the clue to the riddle.--
"No," does he say again?--You know quite well that I am thirty-seven.
I am very sorry, but just ask your friends to dine at the /Rocher de
Cancale/. I /could/ have them here, but I will not; they shall not
come. And then perhaps my poor little monologue may engrave that
salutary maxim, "Each is master at home," upon your memory. That is
our character,' she added, laughing, with a return of the opera girl's
giddiness and caprice.
" 'Well, well, my dear little puss; there, there, never mind. We can
manage to get on together,' said du Bruel, and he kissed her hands,
and we came away. But he was very wroth.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: it. I was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at
my own charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found
its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was
a man who held blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he
heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros as my home.
Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the
country, so far from all society and comfort, between the codfish
and the moorcocks; and thus it was that now, when I had done with
my classes, I was returning thither with so light a heart that July
day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but
|
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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved
against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous
than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained
the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was
beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and
indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found
himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the
nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?
"What luck!" she repeated. "How nice of you to come to my
rescue!"
He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and
|
