The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi
overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work
from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary
dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there
appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of
the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long
years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the
breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of
The Fall of the House of Usher |
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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: for Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have been to
many of the human race. I entered the shop of a bookseller and
bookbinder at the age of thirteen, in the year 1804, remained there
eight years, and during the chief part of my time bound books.
Now it was in those books, in the hours after work, that I found
the beginning of my philosophy.
There were two that especially helped me, the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica," from which I gained my first notions of electricity,
and Mrs. Marcet's "Conversation on Chemistry," which gave me my
foundation in that science.
'Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a
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