| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: "The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss
upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of
moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is
too late. Your cough--"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it
at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a
grotesque one.
|
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 Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: AN Officer of the Government, with a great outfit of mule-waggons
loaded with balloons, kites, dynamite bombs, and electrical
apparatus, halted in the midst of a desert, where there had been no
rain for ten years, and set up a camp. After several months of
preparation and an expenditure of a million dollars all was in
readiness, and a series of tremendous explosions occurred on the
earth and in the sky. This was followed by a great down-pour of
rain, which washed the unfortunate Officer of the Government and
the outfit off the face of creation and affected the agricultural
heart with joy too deep for utterance. A Newspaper Reporter who
had just arrived escaped by climbing a hill near by, and there he
Fantastic Fables |
