| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde: fait, si, je le sais.
LE JEUNE SYRIEN. Vous venez de quitter le festin, princesse?
SALOME. Comme l'air est frais ici! Enfin, ici on respire! Le-
dedans il y a des Juifs de Jerusalem qui se dechirent e cause de
leurs ridicules ceremonies, et des barbares qui boivent toujours et
jettent leur vin sur les dalles, et des Grecs de Smyrne avec leurs
yeux peints et leurs joues fardees, et leurs cheveux frises en
spirales, et des Egyptiens, silencieux, subtils, avec leurs ongles
de jade et leurs manteaux bruns, et des Romains avec leur brutalite,
leur lourdeur, leurs gros mots. Ah! que je deteste les Romains! Ce
sont des gens communs, et ils se donnent des airs de grands
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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 Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: cared to shine for his sake alone.
While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out
natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem
before him if he attempts to consider love in all its
developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the
heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love,
there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine,
a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect. A
rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis
through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass. Passion
she knew, but she did not love as yet.
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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 Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: out its arms in a gesture which was unmistakably one of desperation
-- an intelligent desperation apparently sufficient to prove every
theory of Herbert West. Certainly, the nerves were recalling the
man’s last act in life; the struggle to get free of the falling
aeroplane.
What followed, I shall never positively know. It
may have been wholly an hallucination from the shock caused at
that instant by the sudden and complete destruction of the building
in a cataclysm of German shell-fire -- who can gainsay it, since
West and I were the only proved survivors? West liked to think
that before his recent disappearance, but there were times when
Herbert West: Reanimator |
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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: from the point above, cast loose the canoes, and by then had
worked them into the current. When they had drifted out of rifle-
shot they clambered over the sides and paddled ashore.
"Give me the priest, and you may have them back again. Come!
Speak your mind, but without haste."
Stockard shook his head. His glance dropped to the woman of the
Teslin Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have
wavered had he not lifted his eyes to the men before him.
"I am not afraid," Sturges Owen spoke up. "The Lord bears me in
his right hand, and alone am I ready to go into the camp of the
unbeliever. It is not too late. Faith may move mountains. Even
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