| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: the poor man was now obliged to live by his daily labor. His wife was
dead of the fever, and money was owing for Perotte's nursing. The wife
of Pierre Cambremer owed about one hundred francs to divers persons
for the little girl,--linen, clothes, and what not,--and it so chanced
that she had sewed a bit of Spanish gold into her mattress for a nest-
egg toward paying off that money. It was wrapped in paper, and on the
paper was written by her: 'For Perotte.' Jacquette Brouin had had a
fine education; she could write like a clerk, and had taught her son
to write too. I can't tell you how it was that the villain scented the
gold, stole it, and went off to Croisic to enjoy himself. Pierre
Cambremer, as if it was ordained, came back that day in his boat; as
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom
I should have had nothing to say. I was by the strangest of chances
wondering how I should meet him when the revolution unmistakably occurred.
I call it a revolution because I now see how, with the word he spoke,
the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe
was precipitated. "Look here, my dear, you know," he charmingly said,
"when in the world, please, am I going back to school?"
Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough,
particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which,
at all interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess,
he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses.
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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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: intensity the bas-relief on which the youth had found himself
working, chilled and clad only in his night clothes, when waking
had stolen bewilderingly over him. My uncle blamed his old age,
Wilcox afterwards said, for his slowness in recognizing both hieroglyphics
and pictorial design. Many of his questions seemed highly out
of place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect
the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not
understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered
in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread
mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became
convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or
Call of Cthulhu |
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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a
trapdoor, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed
down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we
descended into a room below, the existence of which had never been
suspected. In this room there had been a window and a flue, but
they had been bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help
of candles we examined this place; it still retained some moldering
furniture,--three chairs, an oak settle, a table,--all of the
fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers
against the wall, in which we found, half rotted away, old-
fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn
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