| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: one of his terrible laughs.
"So you are here again, Macumazahn," he said, "grown older, but
still the same; here at the appointed hour. What do you come to
seek from the Opener of Roads? Not Mameena as I think this time.
No, no, it is she who seeks you this time, Macumazahn. She found
you once, did she not? Far away to the north among a strange
people who worshipped an Ivory Child, a people of whom I knew in
my youth, and afterwards, for was not their prophet, Harut, a
friend of mine and one of our brotherhood? She found you beneath
the tusks of the elephant, Jana, whom Macumazahn the skilful
could not hit. Oh! do not look astonished."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: the dead one would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously
passed at Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch.
The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a
winter's morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early work,
stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained--
superficially at least--by a visible wound to his head; such a wound
as might have been produced--and as, on the final evidence, HAD been--
by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house,
on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of
which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor,
accounted for much--practically, in the end and after the inquest and
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: BREMO.
At thy request I'll spare him, but never any after
him. Say, hermit, what canst thou do?
MUCEDORUS.
I'll wait on thee, sometime upon the queen. Such
Service shalt thou shortly have as Bremo never had.
[Exeunt.]
ACT IV. SCENE IV. The Court.
[Enter Segasto, the Clown, and ROMBELO.]
SEGASTO.
Come, sirs; what, shall I never have you find out
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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 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: broke into scattering units, the fire leapt and sank down.
The crowd of Beast People fled in sudden panic before me, up the beach.
In my excitement I fired at their retreating backs as they
disappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to the black heaps upon
the ground.
Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-man
sprawling across his body. The brute was dead, but still
gripping Montgomery's throat with its curving claws.
Near by lay M'ling on his face and quite still, his neck bitten
open and the upper part of the smashed brandy-bottle in his hand.
Two other figures lay near the fire,--the one motionless, the other
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
