| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: Then Hamilcar planted crosses for those who should speak of surrender,
and even the women were brigaded. The people lay in the streets and
waited full of distress.
Then one morning before sunrise (it was the seventh day of the month
of Nyssan) they heard a great shout uttered by all the Barbarians
simultaneously; the leaden-tubed trumpets pealed, and the great
Paphlagonian horns bellowed like bulls. All rose and ran to the
rampart.
A forest of lances, pikes, and swords bristled at its base. It leaped
against the wall, the ladders grappled them; and Barbarians' heads
appeared in the intervals of the battlements.
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: movement, till at last he seemed to be actually hurled through the
door which Mimi's entrance had left open, and fell at full length on
the gravel path without.
Then came the final and complete collapse of Lilla, who, without a
sound, sank down on the floor.
CHAPTER XXVI--FACE TO FACE
Mimi was greatly distressed when she saw her cousin lying prone.
She had a few times in her life seen Lilla on the verge of fainting,
but never senseless; and now she was frightened. She threw herself
on her knees beside Lilla, and tried, by rubbing her hands and other
measures commonly known, to restore her. But all her efforts were
Lair of the White Worm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the
old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to
hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.
The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor
indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another,
or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though
handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough
out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and
all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be
specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us
|
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 Koran: will never be believers; but, verily, thy Lord He is mighty, merciful!
And, verily, it is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds; the
Faithful Spirit came down with it upon thy heart, that thou shouldst
be of those who warn;-in plain Arabic language, and, verily, it is
(foretold) in the scriptures of yore! Have they not a sign, that the
learned men of the children of Israel recognise it? Had we sent it
down to any barbarian, and he had read it to them, they would not have
believed therein. Thus have we made for it a way into the hearts of
the sinners; they will not believe therein until they see the grievous
woe! and it shall come to them suddenly while they do not perceive!
They will say, 'Shall we be respited?- What! do they wish to hasten on
The Koran |
