| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: seasons. Brown and yellow butterflies are sown and carried away
again by the light air - like thistledown. The loneliness of these
coverts is so excessive, that there are moments when pleasure draws
to the verge of fear. You listen and listen for some noise to break
the silence, till you grow half mesmerised by the intensity of the
strain; your sense of your own identity is troubled; your brain
reels, like that of some gymnosophist poring on his own nose in
Asiatic jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, you see
them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature of the scene around
you.
Still the forest is always, but the stillness is not always unbroken.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take
to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as
yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still
beyond the invader's farthest advance."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words,
were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved
from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant
stepped aside.
II
Peyton Fahrquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and
highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure from
the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was
a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr.
Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides
a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact
that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the
sound made by a wasp at a windowpane.
Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those
gentlemen from nowhere Fate still succeeds in producing for the
stimulation of mankind. He came, it was variously said, from
Australia and America and the South of France. He was also
|
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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound
caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was
swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which
broke the shock), and the lion was on the top of me, and the next those
great white teeth of his had met in my thigh--I heard them grate against
the bone. I yelled out in agony, for I did not feel in the least
benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone--whom, by the way, I knew very
well--and gave myself up for dead. But suddenly, at that moment, the
lion's grip on my thigh loosened, and he stood over me, swaying to and
fro, his huge mouth, from which the blood was gushing, wide opened.
Then he roared, and the sound shook the rocks.
Long Odds |
