| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters -- the most difficult
kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much
affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the
young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied
the undertaker. The hyena.
"One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
I and my comrades, four in all,
When visiting a graveyard stood
Within the shadow of a wall.
"While waiting for the moon to sink
 The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnameable violence and
perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous
families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above
the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into
the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as
a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops
still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though
those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under
which they and their ancestors were born.
No one, even those
who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just
 The Dunwich Horror |