| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Bradley tossed him another bit of dried meat, waiting patiently
until he had eaten it, this time more slowly.
"What do you mean by saying there is a way out?" he asked.
"He who died here just after I came, told me," replied An-Tak.
"He said there was a way out, that he had discovered it but was
too weak to use his knowledge. He was trying to tell me how to
find it when he died. Oh, Luata, if he had lived but a moment more!"
"They do not feed you here?" asked Bradley.
"No, they give me water once a day--that is all."
"But how have you lived, then?"
"The lizards and the rats," replied An-Tak. "The lizards are not
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: figure, how well I knew those appearances of a person who has "made
up her mind." A very hopeless condition that, specially in women.
I mistrusted her concession so easily, so stonily made. She
reflected a moment. "Yes. I ought to have said--ingratitude,
perhaps."
After having thus disengaged her brother and pushed the poor girl a
little further off as it were--isn't women's cleverness perfectly
diabolic when they are really put on their mettle?--after having
done these things and also made me feel that I was no match for her,
she went on scrupulously: "One doesn't like to use that word
either. The claim is very small. It's so little one could do for
Chance |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: for? Look at you, all decent and unriotous, and only fit to sit on
juries and mend the wood-house door. You was a man once. I have
hostility for all such acts. Why don't you go in the house and count
the tidies or set the clock, and not stand out here in the atmosphere?
A jack-rabbit might come along and bite you.'
"'Now, Buck,' says Perry, speaking mild, and some sorrowful, 'you
don't understand. A married man has got to be different. He feels
different from a tough old cloudburst like you. It's sinful to waste
time pulling up towns just to look at their roots, and playing faro
and looking upon red liquor, and such restless policies as them.'
"'There was a time,' I says, and I expect I sighed when I mentioned
|
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 The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: and powerful, those emblems of hope make company for the look-out
man in the night watches; and so the days glide by, with a long
rest for those characteristically shaped pieces of iron, reposing
forward, visible from almost every part of the ship's deck, waiting
for their work on the other side of the world somewhere, while the
ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter of foam
underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy limbs.
The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew's
eyes, is announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the
boatswain: "We will get the anchors over this afternoon" or "first
thing to-morrow morning," as the case may be. For the chief mate
The Mirror of the Sea |
