| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: human specimens required large modifications.
The bodies had
to be exceedingly fresh, or the slight decomposition of brain
tissue would render perfect reanimation impossible. Indeed, the
greatest problem was to get them fresh enough -- West had had
horrible experiences during his secret college researches with
corpses of doubtful vintage. The results of partial or imperfect
animation were much more hideous than were the total failures,
and we both held fearsome recollections of such things. Ever since
our first daemoniac session in the deserted farmhouse on Meadow
Hill in Arkham, we had felt a brooding menace; and West, though
 Herbert West: Reanimator |
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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: delicious. I tasted the odour of a hundred blossoms and the green
shimmering of innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted sunbeams
and the breath of highland breezes and the song of many birds and
the murmur of flowing streams,--all in a wild strawberry.
Do you remember, in THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, a remark which Isaak Walton
quotes from a certain "Doctor Boteler" about strawberries?
"Doubtless," said that wise old man, "God could have made a better
berry, but doubtless God never did."
Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God made.
I think it would have been pleasant to know a man who could sum up
his reflections upon the important question of berries in such a
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