| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: region around us. A voice from other epochs belongs in a graveyard
of other epochs. As it was, however, the noise shattered all our
profoundly seated adjustments - all our tacit acceptance of the
inner antarctic as a waste utterly and irrevocably void of every
vestige of normal life. What we heard was not the fabulous note
of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness
an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response. Instead,
it was a thing so mockingly normal and so unerringly familiarized
by our sea days off Victoria Land and our camp days at McMurdo
Sound that we shuddered to think of it here, where such things
ought not to be. To be brief - it was simply the raucous squawking
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: timorous old maid, now, who would really like all her money in her
stocking in gold pieces, only she's ashamed to say so! But a young fellow
like you with no responsibility, no wife, and butcher's bill--it's quite
another thing!'"
"'Quite,' said I, 'oh, quite!'"
"Richard," interrupted Ethel, "do you have to make yourself out so
simple?"
"My dear, you forget that I said I should invent nothing, but should keep
myself to actual experiences. The part of my story that is coming now is
one where I should be very glad to draw upon my imagination."
"Mr. Beverly now ran his finger up and down various columns. 'Here
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