| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He
looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed
to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of
those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and
meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish
"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my
young brother here, under whose preaching of the Word you have
been privileged to sit" -- here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the
shoulder of a pale young man beside him -- "I have sought, I say,
to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here
The Scarlet Letter |
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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: direction, to work up to full daylight by one channel or another
if granted sufficient time for plentiful trial and error. So at
last we set off eagerly in the indicated direction of the nearest
tunnel.
According to the carvings from which we had made our
map, the desired tunnel mouth could not be much more than a quarter
of a mile from where we stood; the intervening space showing solid-looking
buildings quite likely to be penetrable still at a sub-glacial
level. The opening itself would be in the basement - on the angle
nearest the foothills - of a vast five-pointed structure of evidently
public and perhaps ceremonial nature, which we tried to identify
At the Mountains of Madness |
