| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: LADY CHILTERN. That makes no matter. She must know at once that she
has been mistaken in you - and that you are not a man to do anything
base or underhand or dishonourable. Write here, Robert. Write that
you decline to support this scheme of hers, as you hold it to be a
dishonest scheme. Yes - write the word dishonest. She knows what
that word means. [SIR ROBERT CHILTERN sits down and writes a letter.
His wife takes it up and reads it.] Yes; that will do. [Rings
bell.] And now the envelope. [He writes the envelope slowly. Enter
MASON.] Have this letter sent at once to Claridge's Hotel. There is
no answer. [Exit MASON. LADY CHILTERN kneels down beside her
husband, and puts her arms around him.] Robert, love gives one an
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: before the ambulance could reach him he was dead. Physicians found
no adequate cause the end, and laid it to heart trouble and a
weakened constitution. I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark
terror which will never leave me till I, too, am at rest; "accidentally"
or otherwise. Persuad-g the widow that my connexion with her husband's
"technical matters" was sufficient to entitle me to his manuscript,
I bore the document away and began to read it on the London boat.
It was a simple, rambling thing - a naive sailor's effort at
a post-facto diary - and strove to recall day by day that last
awful voyage. I cannot attempt to transcribe it verbatim in all
its cloudiness and redundance, but I will tell its gist enough
Call of Cthulhu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: resentment can hurry some men, my nameless old persecutor had
provided me a monument at the stone-cutter's and would have
erected it in the parish-church; and this piece of notorious and
expensive villany had actually succeeded, had I not used my
utmost interest with the vestry, where it was carried at last but
by two voices, that I am still alive. That stratagem failing, out
comes a long sable elegy, bedeck'd with hour-glasses, mattocks,
sculls, spades, and skeletons, with an epitaph as confidently
written to abuse me, and my profession, as if I had been under
ground these twenty years.
And, after such barbarous treatment as this, can the world blame
|
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 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of
the sentinel," said Fahrquhar, smiling, "what could he
accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he
replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had
lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier
at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like
tinder."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank.
He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode
away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
