| 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: very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:
"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly,
but I reckon I got to be excused--for the present."
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold
impudence of it that she couldn't say a word for as much
as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge
Tom and whisper:
"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance
as this and throwing it away?"
But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:
"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I
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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 Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: after all. There certainly was Mary's face, but there was
something else, something he had not seen on Mary's features
when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with the doctor,
nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning on the
bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from those eyes,
the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face,
Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid
presentment of evil I have ever seen." He turned the paper over
mechanically in his hand and glanced at the back.
"Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: come to them.
"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger
also came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-
Flour. We knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off
the same landing, and who hear each other sleeping, coughing,
dressing, and so at last become used to one another. My neighbor
informed me that the landlord, to whom I owed three quarters'
rent, had turned me out; I must clear out next morning. He
himself was also turned out on account of his occupation. I spent
the most miserable night of my life. Where was I to get a
messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: can make symphonies without the aid of dance tunes. As much,
perhaps, will be claimed for the preludes and fugues of Bach; but
Bach's method was unattainable: his compositions were wonderful
webs of exquisitely beautiful Gothic traceries in sound, quite
beyond all ordinary human talent. Beethoven's far blunter craft
was thoroughly popular and practicable: not to save his soul
could he have drawn one long Gothic line in sound as Bach could,
much less have woven several of them together with so apt a
harmony that even when the composer is unmoved its progressions
saturate themselves with the emotion which (as modern critics are
a little apt to forget) springs as warmly from our delicately
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