| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I
may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all's right?"
"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
stranger youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is
sinking, and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried
together in the ocean--that wide and nameless sepulchre?"
For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the
minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising
like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible,
before the fated group were conscious of it. The house and all
within it trembled; the foundations of the earth seemed to be
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: telling her to take care of things, and I might just as well talk to
that lamp."
Pierrette, ashamed at being reproved before strangers, crept softly
out of the room.
"I am thinking all the time how to subdue that child," said Rogron.
"Isn't she old enough to go to school?" asked Madame Vinet.
Again she was silenced by a look from her husband, who had been
careful to tell her nothing of his own or the colonel's schemes.
"This is what comes of taking charge of other people's children!"
cried the colonel. "You may still have some of your own, you or your
brother. Why don't you both marry?"
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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 Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: a mountain could rise so vast as seen from so prodigious a height
in the air.
Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness
beneath it, till all the northern sky was obscured by the rugged
conical mass. Lofty as the army was, that pale and sinister beacon
rose above it, towering monstrous over all peaks and concernments
of earth, and tasting the atomless aether where the cryptical
moon and the mad planets reel. No mountain known of man was that
which loomed before them. The high clouds far below were but a
fringe for its foothills. The groping dizziness of topmost air
was but a girdle for its loins. Scornful and spectral climbed
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
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 Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: dog."
"You mean that you would not think you had any option if you were
in my place, but since I'm a clean white man there's an option.
By God! sir, it doesn't take me a whole lot of time to make it,
either. I'll see you rot in hell before I'll play Judas."
The words rang like a bell through the room, not loud, but clear
and vibrant. There was a long instant's silence after the
American finished speaking, and as his eyes swept from one to
another of the enemy Bucky met with a surprise. On Colonel
Onate's face was a haggard look of fear--surely it was fear--that
lifted in relief at the young man's brave challenge. He had been
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