| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: men who traveled and talked to strangers, who wore uniforms
with brass buttons, and knew all about these crooked games
of con-men. They were a special caste, neither above nor below
the Haydocks, but apart, artists and adventurers.
The night telegraph-operator at the railroad station was the
most melodramatic figure in town: awake at three in the
morning, alone in a room hectic with clatter of the telegraph
key. All night he "talked" to operators twenty, fifty, a
hundred miles away. It was always to be expected that he would
be held up by robbers. He never was, but round him was a
suggestion of masked faces at the window, revolvers, cords
|
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 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: up numerous specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca.
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Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was directed
to the north-west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.
From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable,
often taking us into great depths. Several times they made use
of the inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed
obliquely to the waterline. In that way we went about two miles,
but without ever obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian Sea,
which soundings of seven thousand fathoms have never reached.
As to the temperature of the lower strata, the thermometer invariably
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
