| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: stones. With a blush he says he never was any good at real
boxing or real fighting.) ``I'm this kind of a fellow. If they
let me alone I'm all right, but if they start monkeying with me
something is going to happen. When you start a thing don't start
it until you can carry it through. These people that started
with me were not able to do that.''
Later it came out that the alleged fighting with the boy is all
in Adolf's mind. He tells us, without noticing any discrepancy,
that no complaint against this boy, who he said had been already
tried and fined, would be received by the police authorities, nor
will they issue a warrant.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: the growth of OURS in every case which doth not promote her advantage,
or in the least interferes with it. A pretty state we should soon be in
under such a secondhand government, considering what has happened!
Men do not change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name:
And in order to shew that reconciliation now is a dangerous doctrine,
I affirm, THAT IT WOULD BE POLICY IN THE KING AT THIS TIME, TO REPEAL
THE ACTS FOR THE SAKE OF REINSTATING HIMSELF IN THE GOVERNMENT
OF THE PROVINCES; in order, that HE MAY ACCOMPLISH BY CRAFT AND SUBTLETY,
IN THE LONG RUN, WHAT HE CANNOT DO BY FORCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE SHORT ONE.
Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.
SECONDLY. That as even the best terms, which we can expect to obtain,
Common Sense |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for
any sensation.
He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into
his brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his,
musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul
had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her.
To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made
him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till
life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect,
the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
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 Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: first trip outside the Dunwich region. Correspondence with the
Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,
the British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library
of Miskatonic University at Arkham had failed to get him the loan
of a book he desperately wanted; so at length he set out in person,
shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect, to consult the
copy at Miskatonic, which was the nearest to him geographically.
Almost eight feet tall, and carrying a cheap new valise from Osborne's
general store, this dark and goatish gargoyle appeared one day
in Arkham in quest of the dreaded volume kept under lock and key
at the college library - the hideous Necronomicon of the mad Arab
The Dunwich Horror |
