| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: returned, and reported that the country had been scoured for
fifteen miles round without a single Elmoran being seen, and
that they believed that those gentry had given up the pursuit
and returned whence they came. Mr Mackenzie gave a sigh of relief
when he heard this, and so indeed did we, for we had had quite
enough of the Masai to last us for some time. Indeed, the general
opinion was that, finding we had reached the mission station
in safety, they had, knowing its strength, given up the pursuit
of us as a bad job. How ill-judged that view was the sequel
will show.
After the spies had gone, and Mrs Mackenzie and Flossie had retired
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: walls of the courtyard. At dawn it began, and by midday, do what
we could to stay it, the wall was stormed, and leaving nearly a
hundred dead and wounded behind me, I was driven to the winding way
that led to the summit of the pyramid. Here they assaulted us
again, but the road was steep and narrow, and their numbers gave
them no great advantage on it, so that the end of it was that we
beat them back with loss, and there was no more fighting that day.
The night which followed we spent upon the summit of the pyramid,
and for my part I was so weary that after I had eaten I never slept
more soundly. Next morning the struggle began anew; and this time
with better success to the Spaniards. Inch by inch under cover of
Montezuma's Daughter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: to his army, with the honour of having remitted his lance against
so great a leader unrevenged; but Apollo, enraged that a javelin
flung by the assistance of so foul a goddess should pollute his
fountain, put on the shape of -, and softly came to young Boyle,
who then accompanied Temple: he pointed first to the lance, then
to the distant Modern that flung it, and commanded the young hero
to take immediate revenge. Boyle, clad in a suit of armour which
had been given him by all the gods, immediately advanced against
the trembling foe, who now fled before him. As a young lion in the
Libyan plains, or Araby desert, sent by his aged sire to hunt for
prey, or health, or exercise, he scours along, wishing to meet some
|
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: circle of readers than the book could reach. Then Tyler died, sinking
unnoted like a stone in the sea. I observed that Mr Acheson, Mrs
Davenant's champion, calls him Reverend. It may very well be that he
got his knowledge of Hebrew in reading for the Church; and there was
always something of the clergyman or the schoolmaster in his dress and
air. Possibly he may actually have been ordained. But he never told
me that or anything else about his affairs; and his black pessimism
would have shot him violently out of any church at present established
in the West. We never talked about affairs: we talked about
Shakespear, and the Dark Lady, and Swift, and Koheleth, and the
cycles, and the mysterious moments when a feeling came over us that
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