| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Mais une nuit d'été, les voici à Ravenne,
A l'sur le dos écartant les genoux
De quatre jambes molles tout gonflées de morsures.
On relève le drap pour mieux égratigner.
Moins d'une lieue d'ici est Saint Apollinaire
In Classe, basilique connue des amateurs
De chapitaux d'acanthe que touraoie le vent.
Ils vont prendre le train de huit heures
Prolonger leurs misères de Padoue à Milan
Ou se trouvent le Cène, et un restaurant pas cher.
Lui pense aux pourboires, et redige son bilan.
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: right person sitting under his very nose all the time!"
The more he thought the situation over, the more the humor of it
struck him. Finally he said, "I'll never let him hear the last of
that woman. Every time I catch him in company, to his dying day,
I'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel
him so when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along,
'Got on her track yet--hey, Pudd'nhead?'" He wanted to laugh,
but that would not have answered; there were people about, and he
was mourning for his uncle. He made up his mind that it would be
good entertainment to look in on Wilson that night and watch him
worry over his barren law case and goad him with an exasperating
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: astronomers for such things, and that their motions and even their
revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be calculated, so that they
cannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or foretellers, much less
the procurers, of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.
But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or have
been, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary influence
upon the minds of the common people, and they had almost universal
melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgement
coming upon the city; and this principally from the sight of this
comet, and the little alarm that was given in December by two people
dying at St Giles's, as above.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: but can be distinguished at once by having legs. It is a caterpillar,
with six legs upon its thorax and eight sucker-like protuberances
on its body, like a silk-worm. It changes into a chrysalis,
and then assumes its perfect shape as a small brown moth.
The species that attacks books is the OEcophora pseudospretella.
It loves damp and warmth, and eats any fibrous material.
This caterpillar is quite unlike any garden species, and, excepting
the legs, is very similar in appearance and size to the Anobium. It is
about half-inch long, with a horny head and strong jaws.
To printers' ink or writing ink he appears to have no great dislike,
though I imagine that the former often disagrees with his health,
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