| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a
lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan--but,
moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes--an
evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His
air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude
which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as
a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having
stared about him for some moments in silence--"you have
not then seen it?--but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and
having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: staircase straight in front of you. It is a crazy wooden structure,
the spiral balusters are brown with age, and the steps themselves take
a new angle at every turn. The great old-fashioned paneled dining-
room, floored with square white tiles from Chateau-Regnault, is on
your right; to the left is the sitting-room, equally large, but here
the walls are not paneled; they have been covered instead with a
saffron-colored paper, bordered with green. The walnut-wood rafters
are left visible, and the intervening spaces filled with a kind of
white plaster.
The first story consists of two large whitewashed bedrooms with stone
chimney-pieces, less elaborately carved than those in the rooms
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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 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: ranks of infamy in which you were living.--You owe me nothing," said
he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther's face. "I did
it all for him," and he pointed to Lucien. "You are, you will always
be, you will die a prostitute; for in spite of the delightful theories
of cattle-breeders, you can never, here below, become anything but
what you are. The man who feels bumps is right. You have the bump of
love."
The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet,
and many other great politicians. It is a strange thing that most men
of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers
have a tendency to believe in Providence.
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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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: eyelashes, and, as usual, the panther's head dropped. Bagheera
knew his master.
They were lying out far up the side of a hill overlooking the
Waingunga, and the morning mists hung below them in bands of
white and green. As the sun rose it changed into bubbling seas
of red gold, churned off, and let the low rays stripe the dried
grass on which Mowgli and Bagheera were resting. It was the end
of the cold weather, the leaves and the trees looked worn and
faded, and there was a dry, ticking rustle everywhere when the
wind blew. A little leaf tap-tap-tapped furiously against a
twig, as a single leaf caught in a current will. It roused
The Second Jungle Book |
