| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: sun shines. No subterranean caverns produce any order of plant
life even remotely resembling what we have seen disgorged by
this river. Beyond those cliffs lie fertile lands and fresh
water--perhaps, game!"
"Yis, sir," said Olson, "behoind the cliffs! Ye spoke a true
word, sir--behoind!"
Bradley laughed--a rather sorry laugh, though. "You might as
well call our attention to the fact, sir," he said, "that science
has indicated that there is fresh water and vegetation on Mars."
"Not at all," I rejoined. "A U-boat isn't constructed to navigate
space, but it is designed to travel below the surface of the water."
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: there were plants set out; here and there dusky cottages clustered
in the shadow, some with verandahs. A public garden by night, a
rich and fashionable watering-place in a by-season, offer sights
and vistas not dissimilar. And still, on the one side, stretched
the lapping mere, and from the other the deep sea still growled in
the night. But it was most of all on board, in the dead hours,
when I had been better sleeping, that the spell of Fakarava seized
and held me. The moon was down. The harbour lantern and two of
the greater planets drew vari-coloured wakes on the lagoon. From
shore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at intervals above
the organ-point of surf. And the thought of this depopulated
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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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: by the painter's brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal
of the etcher, she still escapes analysis, because she cannot be
caught and rendered in all her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic
Paris itself. She holds to vice by one thread only, and she breaks
away from it at a thousand other points of the social circumference.
Besides, she lets only one trait of her character be known, and that
the only one which renders her blamable; her noble virtues are hidden;
she prefers to glory in her naive libertinism. Most incompletely
rendered in dramas and tales where she is put upon the scene with all
her poesy, she is nowhere really true but in her garret; elsewhere she
is invariably calumniated or over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates;
Ferragus |
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 Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.
You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.
And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;
And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;
And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;
And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.
Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;
And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.
Vailima.
XL - AN END OF TRAVEL
LET now your soul in this substantial world
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