| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: became one of my keenest pleasures. Was it not far better than a ruin?
Certain memories of indisputable authenticity attach themselves to a
ruin; but this house, still standing, though being slowly destroyed by
an avenging hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. At the
very least, it testified to a caprice. More than once in the evening I
boarded the hedge, run wild, which surrounded the enclosure. I braved
scratches, I got into this ownerless garden, this plot which was no
longer public or private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the
disorder. I would not, as the price of the story to which this strange
scene no doubt was due, have asked a single question of any gossiping
native. On that spot I wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: bearing of a ruler of men. I did not need to be told that he
was Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
The first member of our party he met was Tars Tarkas
and his first words sealed forever the new friendship
between the races.
"That Tardos Mors," he said, earnestly, "may meet the
greatest living warrior of Barsoom is a priceless honor, but
that he may lay his hand on the shoulder of a friend and
ally is a far greater boon."
"Jeddak of Helium," returned Tars Tarkas, "it has remained
for a man of another world to teach the green warriors of
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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 Astoria by Washington Irving: returning to the Atlantic States. In this he was joined by Mr.
Crooks, -who, notwithstanding all that he had suffered in the
dismal journey of the preceding winter, was ready to retrace his
steps and brave every danger and hardship, rather than remain at
Astoria. This little handful of adventurous men we propose to
accompany in its long and perilous peregrinations.
The several parties we have mentioned all set off in company on
the 29th of June, under a salute of cannon from the fort. They
were to keep together for mutual protection through the piratical
passes of the river, and to separate, on their different
destinations, at the forks of the Columbia. Their number,
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: descended on him--without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden
black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard,
that struck and struck at you (he could feel the beak on his bare legs,
where it had struck when he was a child) and then made off, and there
he was again, an old man, very sad, reading his book. That he would
kill, that he would strike to the heart. Whatever he did--(and he
might do anything, he felt, looking at the Lighthouse and the distant
shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at
the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track
down and stamp out--tyranny, despotism, he called it--making people
do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak. How
To the Lighthouse |
