| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: of the odd trifle he knew. This person was the late William Channing
Webb, Professor of Anthropology in Princeton University, and an
explorer of no slight note. Professor Webb had been engaged, forty-eight
years before, in a tour of Greenland and Iceland in search of
some Runic inscriptions which he failed to unearth; and whilst
high up on the West Greenland coast had encountered a singular
tribe or cult of degenerate Esquimaux whose religion, a curious
form of devil-worship, chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness
and repulsiveness. It was a faith of which other Esquimaux knew
little, and which they mentioned only with shudders, saying that
it had come down from horribly ancient aeons before ever the world
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: made me squint, leaning over so much. So I just planted it upright.
And solid, I promise you! I suspended myself with both hands to the
cross-piece. Not a move. Oh, I did that properly."
At times Gobila came to see them. Gobila was the chief of the
neighbouring villages. He was a gray-headed savage, thin and black,
with a white cloth round his loins and a mangy panther skin hanging
over his back. He came up with long strides of his skeleton legs,
swinging a staff as tall as himself, and, entering the common room of
the station, would squat on his heels to the left of the door. There
he sat, watching Kayerts, and now and then making a speech which the
other did not understand. Kayerts, without interrupting his
Tales of Unrest |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: looks wonderingly on his grandfather's watch in the picture,
is now the veteran Sheriff EMERITIS of Perth. And I hear a
story of a lady who returned the other day to Edinburgh, after
an absence of sixty years: "I could see none of my old
friends," she said, "until I went into the Raeburn Gallery,
and found them all there."
It would be difficult to say whether the collection was
more interesting on the score of unity or diversity. Where
the portraits were all of the same period, almost all of the
same race, and all from the same brush, there could not fail
to be many points of similarity. And yet the similarity of
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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 Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: For when I looked, Oh! blessed miracle,
Her lips had parted and Our Lady smiled!
And then I knew that Love is worth its pain
And that my heart was richer for his sake,
Since lack of love is bitterest of all.
The day is broad awake -- the first long beam
Of level sun finds Sister Marta's face,
And trembling there it lights a timid smile
Upon the lips that say so many prayers,
And have no words for hate and none for love.
But when she passes where her prayers have gone,
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