| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: in August. "Heaven forgive her--now I understand!" She flushed
for dismay.
But I wasn't afraid of the effect on her good nature of her thus
seeing, through her great goggles, why it had always been that
Flora held her at such a distance. "I can't tell you," I said,
"from what special affection, what state of the eye, her danger
proceeds: that's the one thing she succeeded this morning in
keeping from me. She knows it herself perfectly; she has had the
best advice in Europe. 'It's a thing that's awful, simply awful'--
that was the only account she would give me. Year before last,
while she was at Boulogne, she went for three days with Mrs. Floyd-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: and evidently directed by a hand unaccustomed to the use of a pen.
James Starr tore it open. It contained only a scrap of paper,
yellowed by time, and apparently torn out of an old copy book.
On this paper was written a single sentence, thus worded:
"It is useless for the engineer James Starr to trouble himself,
Simon Ford's letter being now without object."
No signature.
CHAPTER II ON THE ROAD
THE course of James Starr's ideas was abruptly stopped,
when he got this second letter contradicting the first.
"What does this mean?" said he to himself. He took up the torn envelope,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: twice it seemed to us that small living things had rustled out of our
reach, but what they were we never saw. They may have been venomous beasts
for all I know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a pitch
when a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far
above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it
filtered through a grating that barred our way.
We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and
more cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating,
and by pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion of
the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some
rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: scrap, but that, apparently, he sleeps very little.
Even at night, when I go below to fill my pipe, I
notice that, though dozing flat on his back, he
still looks very determined. From the side glance
he gives me when awake it seems as though he were
annoyed at being interrupted in some arduous
mental operation; and as I emerge on deck the
ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, un-
clouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are:
stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters;
the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which
The Shadow Line |
