| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: rest for five to ten minutes. I don't know what force
urged me on and kept me going in the face of an absolute
conviction that my efforts were utterly futile. I counted us
already as good as dead; but still I dragged myself along until
the time came that I could no longer rise, but could only crawl
along a few inches at a time, dragging Ajor beside me. Her sweet
voice, now almost inaudible from weakness, implored me to
abandon her and save myself--she seemed to think only of me.
Of course I couldn't have left her there alone, no matter how
much I might have desired to do so; but the fact of the matter
was that I didn't desire to leave her. What I said to her then
The People That Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: X
He on his throne was set, to which on height
Who clomb an hundred ivory stairs first told,
Under a pentise wrought of silver bright,
And trod on carpets made of silk and gold;
His robes were such as best beseemen might
A king, so great, so grave, so rich, so old,
And twined of sixty ells of lawn and more
A turban strange adorned his tresses hoar.
XI
His right hand did his precious sceptre wield,
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow
and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed again, and bringing
things out and putting them away again. It was not easy or snug this
world she had known for close on seventy years. Bowed down she was
with weariness. How long, she asked, creaking and groaning on her
knees under the bed, dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but
hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up, and again with her
sidelong leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face,
and her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlessly smiling,
and began again the old amble and hobble, taking up mats, putting down
china, looking sideways in the glass, as if, after all, she had her
To the Lighthouse |
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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: carving, ivories, enamels, porcelains, and the like. He had sunk the
greater part of his patrimony, not so much in the purchases themselves
as on the expenses of transit; and every penny inherited from his
mother had been spent in the course of a three-years' travel in Italy
after the residence in Rome came to an end. He had seen Venice, Milan,
Florence, Bologna, and Naples leisurely, as he wished to see them, as
a dreamer of dreams, and a philosopher; careless of the future, for an
artist looks to his talent for support as the /fille de joie/ counts
upon her beauty.
All through those splendid years of travel Pons was as happy as was
possible to a man with a great soul, a sensitive nature, and a face so
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