| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: goo-gooing. Then we watched them go and bullyrag Jake;
because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it would
take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef
and dummy sometimes, and speak out before he thought.
When we had watched long enough to see that Jake was
getting along all right and working his signs very good,
we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse
about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp.
I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row
in the sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed,
that I couldn't seem to get over it, and Tom he felt
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: the police. In the small hours of the morning a body of silent
men had entered the grounds, and their leader had aroused the
attendants. He was a menacing military figure who talked without
moving his lips and whose voice seemed almost ventriloquially
connected with an immense black case he carried. His expressionless
face was handsome to the point of radiant beauty, but had shocked
the superintendent when the hall light fell on it -- for it was
a wax face with eyes of painted glass. Some nameless accident
had befallen this man. A larger man guided his steps; a repellent
hulk whose bluish face seemed half eaten away by some unknown
malady. The speaker had asked for the custody of the cannibal
Herbert West: Reanimator |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: baked, the wheat flamed, the harvestmen worked with their faces
scorched by the reflection of the sun-rays on the hard and arid earth.
All were silent, their shirts wet with perspiration; while from time
to time, they slaked their thirst with water from round, earthenware
jugs, furnished with two handles and a mouth-piece stoppered with a
willow stick.
At the father end of the stubble-field stood the carts which contained
the sheaves, and near them a group of at least a hundred beings who
far exceeded the hideous conceptions of Murillo and Teniers, the
boldest painters of such scenes, or of Callot, that poet of the
fantastic in poverty. The pictured bronze legs, the bare heads, the
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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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: [Enter Locrine, Camber, Corineius, Assaracus,
Thrasimachus, and the soldiers.]
LOCRINE.
Thus from the furty of Bellona's broils,
With sound of drum and trumpets' melody,
The Brittain king returns triumphantly.
The Scithians slain with great occasion
Do equalize the grass in multitude,
And with their blood have stained the streaming brooks,
Offering their bodies and their dearest blood
As sacrifice to Albanactus' ghost.
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