| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: thread is here superfluous.
The other snarers, on the contrary, who occupy a distant retreat by
day, cannot do without a private wire that keeps them in permanent
communication with the deserted web. All of them have one, in
point of fact, but only when age comes, age prone to rest and to
long slumbers. In their youth, the Epeirae, who are then very
wide-awake, know nothing of the art of telegraphy. Besides, their
web, a short-lived work whereof hardly a trace remains on the
morrow, does not allow of this kind of industry. It is no use
going to the expense of a signalling-apparatus for a ruined snare
wherein nothing can now be caught. Only the old Spiders,
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent
box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to
find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in
heaven, and we DON'T - now that is the simple fact, and we have got
to do the best we can with it. The learned men from other planets
and other systems come here and hang around a while, when they are
touring around the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section
of heaven and write a book of travels, and they give America about
five lines in it. And what do they say about us? They say this
wilderness is populated with a scattering few hundred thousand
|
| 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: elderly generals--move and walk, and yet seem stationary. Like old
trees that are half uprooted by the current of a river, they seem
never to take part in the torrent of Paris, with its youthful, active
crowd. It is impossible to know if their friends have forgotten to
bury them, or whether they have escaped out of their coffins. At any
rate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils.
One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into a
neighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine,
are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the south
entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the Observatoire,
--a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris. There, Paris is
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: 'I dread to think of it!' cried his daughter with a shudder. 'How
did you know him?'
'Know him!' returned the locksmith. 'I didn't know him--how could
I? I had never seen him, often as I had heard and spoken of him.
I took him to Mrs Rudge's; and she no sooner saw him than the truth
came out.'
'Miss Emma, father--If this news should reach her, enlarged upon as
it is sure to be, she will go distracted.'
'Why, lookye there again, how a man suffers for being good-
natured,' said the locksmith. 'Miss Emma was with her uncle at the
masquerade at Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at
Barnaby Rudge |
