| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: indelible sentiment in the female breast. An old maid's soul is
jealous and yet void; for she knows but one side--the miserable side--
of the only passion men will allow (because it flatters them) to
women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes, forced to deny themselves the
natural development of their natures, old maids endure an inward
torment to which they never grow accustomed. It is hard at any age,
above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of
others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to
emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that
an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from
fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false
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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 Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: His face was cold and cruel, and in the grey eyes the
Swede read murder.
"Where is my wife?" growled the ape-man. "Where is the child?"
Anderssen tried to reply, but a sudden fit of coughing choked him.
There was an arrow entirely through his chest, and as he coughed the
blood from his wounded lung poured suddenly from his mouth and nostrils.
Tarzan stood waiting for the paroxysm to pass. Like a
bronze image--cold, hard, and relentless--he stood over the
helpless man, waiting to wring such information from him
as he needed, and then to kill.
Presently the coughing and haemorrhage ceased, and again
The Beasts of Tarzan |
