| 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: on top of which, incongruous in its diminutiveness, rested the
noxious carven statuette. From a wide circle of ten scaffolds
set up at regular intervals with the flame-girt monolith as a
centre hung, head downward, the oddly marred bodies of the helpless
squatters who had disappeared. It was inside this circle that
the ring of worshippers jumped and roared, the general direction
of the mass motion being from left to right in endless Bacchanal
between the ring of bodies and the ring of fire.
It may have
been only imagination and it may have been only echoes which induced
one of the men, an excitable Spaniard, to fancy he heard antiphonal
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: while wiping the perspiration from his brow. His face was worn; his beard
ragged and unkempt; his appearance suggestive of extreme fatigue. "It was this
way: Colonel Crawford had four hundred and eighty men under him, with Slover
and me acting as guides. This was a large force of men and comprised soldiers
from Pitt and the other forts and settlers from all along the river. You see,
Crawford wanted to crush the Shawnees at one blow. When we reached the
Sandusky River, which we did after an arduous march, not one Indian did we
see. You know Crawford expected to surprise the Shawnee camp, and when he
found it deserted he didn't know what to do. Slover and I both advised an
immediate retreat. Crawford would not listen to us. I tried to explain to him
that ever since the Guadenhutten massacre keen-eyed Indian scouts had been
Betty Zane |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: pleasant Sunday school engagements with my friends, during the
year 1835, at Mr. Freeland's. It had, however, never entirely
subsided. I hated slavery, always, and the desire for freedom
only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any
moment. The thought of only being a creature of the _present_
and the _past_, troubled me, and I longed to have a _future_--a
future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and
present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul--whose
life and happiness is unceasing progress--what the prison is to
the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors. The dawning of
this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: profound melancholy cry. "She's been well brought up," said the
lighthearted soldier; "she says her prayers." But this mental joke
only occurred to him when he noticed what a pacific attitude his
companion remained in. "Come, ma petite blonde, I'll let you go to bed
first," he said to her, counting on the activity of his own legs to
run away as quickly as possible, directly she was asleep, and seek
another shelter for the night.
The soldier waited with impatience the hour of his flight, and when it
had arrived he walked vigorously in the direction of the Nile; but
hardly had he made a quarter of a league in the sand when he heard the
panther bounding after him, crying with that saw-like cry more
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