| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: but the darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too,
was young and could sleep like a stone. Remained the steward,
but he was not likely to wake up before he was called.
I got a sleeping suit out of my room and, coming back on deck,
saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the main hatch,
glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and his
head in his hands. In a moment he had concealed his damp body
in a sleeping suit of the same gray-stripe pattern as the one
I was wearing and followed me like my double on the poop.
Together we moved right aft, barefooted, silent.
"What is it?" I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Othello by William Shakespeare: I won his Daughter
Bra. A Maiden, neuer bold:
Of Spirit so still, and quiet, that her Motion
Blush'd at her selfe, and she, in spight of Nature,
Of Yeares, of Country, Credite, euery thing
To fall in Loue, with what she fear'd to looke on;
It is a iudgement main'd, and most imperfect.
That will confesse Perfection so could erre
Against all rules of Nature, and must be driuen
To find out practises of cunning hell
Why this should be. I therefore vouch againe,
Othello |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound
of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw that the roofs
about the flying stage were dark with his people
rejoicing over his safe return. A dark mass was
crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled
with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute
oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving
hands.
CHAPTER XVII
THREE DAYS
Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath
When the Sleeper Wakes |
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 Coxon Fund by Henry James: little less to make her speak of them as thankless subjects of
social countenance--people for whom she had vainly tried to do
something. I confess I saw how it wouldn't be in a mere week or
two that I should rid myself of the image of Ruth Anvoy, in whose
very name, when I learnt it, I found something secretly to like. I
should probably neither see her nor hear of her again: the
knight's widow (he had been mayor of Clockborough) would pass away
and the heiress would return to her inheritance. I gathered with
surprise that she had not communicated to his wife the story of her
attempt to hear Mr..Saltram, and I founded this reticence on the
easy supposition that Mrs. Saltram had fatigued by overpressure the
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