| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: not having entered at Tulagi, which is the port of entry, you know.
He is not a nice man, and, I repeat, it is impossible."
"There is Guvutu," she suggested.
He shook his head.
"There's nothing there but fever and five white men who are
drinking themselves to death. I couldn't permit it."
"Oh thank you," she said quietly. "I guess I'll start to-day.--
Viaburi! You go along Noa Noah, speak 'm come along me."
Noa Noah was her head sailor, who had been boatswain of the Miele.
"Where are you going?" Sheldon asked in surprise.--"Vlaburi! You
stop."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: boat which had just served to kill her son, and they rowed back round
the tower by the channel of Croisic. Well, well! the belle Brouin, as
they called her, didn't last a week. She died begging her husband to
burn that accursed boat. Oh, he did it! As for him, he became I don't
know what; he staggered about like a man who can't carry his wine.
Then he went away and was gone ten days, and after he returned he put
himself where you saw him, and since he has been there he has never
said one word."
The fisherman related this history rapidly and more simply than I can
write it. The lower classes make few comments as they relate a thing;
they tell the fact that strikes them, and present it as they felt it.
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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 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: at the silent square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows
and its staring blinds. The sky was pure opal now,
and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it.
From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising.
It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge,
that hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall
of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets:
thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.
He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table,
passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom,
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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: produced his false moon, and it was from the cess-pool of Kekscheb
that oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Khorassan,
caused his false sun to emerge.
The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.
The Germoniae[58] narrated Rome. The sewer of Paris has been
an ancient and formidable thing. It has been a sepulchre,
it has served as an asylum. Crime, intelligence, social protest,
liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws persecute
or have persecuted, is hidden in that hole; the maillotins in the
fourteenth century, the tire-laine of the fifteenth, the Huguenots
in the sixteenth, Morin's illuminated in the seventeenth,
Les Miserables |
