| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: blinding copy of the works of Shakespeare. He had a gift,
peculiarly Scandinavian, of making friends at sight: an
elemental innocence commended him; he was without fear,
without reproach, and without money or the hope of making it.
Holdorsen was second mate, and berthed aft, but messed
usually with the hands.
Of one more of the crew, some image lives. This was a
foremast hand out of the Clyde, of the name of Brown. A
small, dark, thickset creature, with dog's eyes, of a disposition
incomparably mild and harmless, he knocked about seas and
cities, the uncomplaining whiptop of one vice. "The drink is
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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 Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: a pillow-like object violently over the twitching face, not withdrawing
it until the corpse appeared quiet and ready for our attempt at
reanimation. The pale enthusiast now applied some last perfunctory
tests for absolute lifelessness, withdrew satisfied, and finally
injected into the left arm an accurately measured amount of the
vital elixir, prepared during the afternoon with a greater care
than we had used since college days, when our feats were new and
groping. I cannot express the wild, breathless suspense with which
we waited for results on this first really fresh specimen -- the
first we could reasonably expect to open its lips in rational
speech, perhaps to tell of what it had seen beyond the unfathomable
Herbert West: Reanimator |
