| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: enough to waste energy and time for this?
But having already gone so far I approached a
little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit.
He would have to come at once with me, sleep on
board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the
ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my
ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hun-
dred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I pro-
posed to give him eighteen dollars for his local
knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he
kept on considering attentively the various aspects
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: speaking. The stranger was simply /an old man/. Some young men, who
were accustomed to decide the future of Europe every morning in a few
fashionable phrases, chose to see in the stranger some great criminal,
the possessor of enormous wealth. Novelists described the old man's
life and gave some really interesting details of the atrocities
committed by him while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore.
Bankers, men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable.
"Bah!" they would say, shrugging their broad shoulders pityingly,
"that little old fellow's a /Genoese head/!"
"If it is not an impertinent question, monsieur, would you have the
kindness to tell me what you mean by a Genoese head?"
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: emerges as a small brown beetle.
2. "Oecophora."--This larva is similar in size to that of Anobium,
but can be distinguished at once by having legs. It is a caterpillar,
with six legs upon its thorax and eight sucker-like protuberances
on its body, like a silk-worm. It changes into a chrysalis,
and then assumes its perfect shape as a small brown moth.
The species that attacks books is the OEcophora pseudospretella.
It loves damp and warmth, and eats any fibrous material.
This caterpillar is quite unlike any garden species, and, excepting
the legs, is very similar in appearance and size to the Anobium. It is
about half-inch long, with a horny head and strong jaws.
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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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: imagined, were the souvenirs from his previous wanderings. When his
pockets were finally emptied, there was still no identification, but
instead, on the table before them, his interrogators saw the
following objects, namely, viz., and to wit: the bottle cap, the
chicken brains, the horse manure, a piece of grimy string, a cigar
butt, three pieces of chewed and flattened gum, a wing nut with
stripped threads, a rusty nail (bent in two places), part of a candy
wrapper, some rat pills (eleven of them), half a marble, and a
common pebble.
After a moment or two of reflective silence, the mayor made bold to
speak (seeing the constable in a reverie), and asked gently and
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