| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: could, he said to me, not have slept, but have watched untempted
beside millions of gold. At the moment when his virtue rose proudly
and vigorously from the struggle, he knelt down, with a feeling of
ecstasy and happiness, and thanked God. He felt happy, light-hearted,
content, as on the day of his first communion, when he thought himself
worthy of the angels because he had passed one day without sinning in
thought, or word, or deed.
He returned to the inn and closed the window without fearing to make a
noise, and went to bed at once. His moral and physical lassitude was
certain to bring him sleep. In a very short time after laying his head
on his mattress, he fell into that first fantastic somnolence which
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On
the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume--a
shirt and socks--in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to
uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as
will presently be seen.
Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the
bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful
duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon
the dead whale's back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a
dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep side, did
I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: wild idea even visited me that it was, after all, the projection of
his mother in Somers that had so seized Judy Harbottle, and that the
original was all that was needed to help the happy process of
detachment. Somers himself at the time was a good deal away on
escort duty: they had a clear field.
I can not tell exactly when--between Mrs. Harbottle and myself--it
became a matter for reference more or less overt, I mean her defined
problem, the thing that went about between her and the sun. It will
be imagined that it did not come up like the weather; indeed, it was
hardly ever to be envisaged and never to be held; but it was always
there, and out of our joint consciousness it would sometimes leap
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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 Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: Martin pared off with his jackknife.
He entered the house a trifle nervously, positive that his only
clean shirt, at present spread over his precious shot-gun, had
been worn once more than he could have wished, but, after all,
how much of one's shirt showed? It would pass. The coat-shirt not
yet introduced, a man had to slip the old-fashioned kind over his
head, drag it down past his shoulders and poke blindly for the
sleeve openings. Martin was thankful when he felt the collar
buttons in their holes. His salt and pepper suit was of a stiff,
unyielding material, and the first time he had worn it the
creases had vanished never to return. Before putting on his
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