| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: called handling-machines, and the study of which has already
given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As
it dawned upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider
with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number
of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles
about its body. Most of its arms were retracted, but with
three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods,
plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently
strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it ex-
tracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level
surface of earth behind it.
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: it, and then, when the time is ripe, strike the blow. Now our
beloved King Henry, when he was the Earl of Derby, what could he
have gained had he stood so against the old King Richard,
brooking the King face to face? I tell thee he would have been
knocked on the head as thou wert like to have been this day. Now
were I thee, and had to fight a fight against odds, I would first
get me friends behind me, and then--" He stopped short, but Myles
understood him well enough.
"Sir," said he, with a gulp, "I do thank thee for thy friendship,
and ask thy pardon for doing as I did anon."
"I grant thee pardon," said the knight, "but tell thee plainly,
Men of Iron |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: from molesting the rubbish inside.
ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the
high temperature of the throne.
Poor Isabella's Dead, whose abdication
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her:
She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
To History she'll be no royal riddle --
Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.
G.J.
ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with
The Devil's Dictionary |
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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: of Olivine scraped out of the volcanic slag-heaps of the Dreisser-
Weiher; the first pair of the Lesser Bustard flushed upon the downs
of the Mosel-kopf; the first sight of the cloud of white Ephemerae,
fluttering in the dusk like a summer snowstorm between us and the
black cliffs of the Rheinstein, while the broad Rhine beneath
flashed blood-red in the blaze of the lightning and the fires of
the Mausenthurm - a lurid Acheron above which seemed to hover ten
thousand unburied ghosts; and last, but not least, on the lip of
the vast Mosel-kopf crater - just above the point where the weight
of the fiery lake has burst the side of the great slag-cup, and
rushed forth between two cliffs of clink-stone across the downs, in
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