| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: like a cloud; and by the bearing of these three stars I know I am
come where I desire. This part of the sea is called the Sea of the
Dead. It is in this place extraordinarily deep, and the floor is
all covered with the bones of men, and in the holes of this part
gods and goblins keep their habitation. The flow of the sea is to
the north, stronger than a shark can swim, and any man who shall
here be thrown out of a ship it bears away like a wild horse into
the uttermost ocean. Presently he is spent and goes down, and his
bones are scattered with the rest, and the gods devour his spirit."
Fear came on Keola at the words, and he looked, and by the light of
the stars and the lantern, the warlock seemed to change.
|
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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: one of proving a universal negative. The possibilities of failure
are enormously increased, and failure is less forgiven for the
assumption. Art might perhaps not unwisely follow the example of
science in such matters where an exhaustive work, which takes the
better part of a lifetime to produce, is invariably entitled by its
erudite author an Elementary Treatise on the subject in hand.
To aid the effect due to simplicity of conception steps in the Far
Oriental's wonderful technique. His brush-strokes are very few in
number, but each one tells. They are laid on with a touch which is
little short of marvelous, and requires heredity to explain its
skill. For in his method there is no emending, no super-position,
|