| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: making as strong a case as possible to excuse their conduct to
Mr. Astor and to the world.
CHAPTER LV.
Anxieties of Mr. Astor.- Memorial of the Northwest Company-
Tidings of a British Naval Expedition Against Astoria. - Mr.
Astor Applies to Government for Protection.- The Frigate Adams
Ordered to be Fitted Out.- Bright News From Astoria.- Sunshine
Suddenly Overclouded.
WHILE difficulties and disasters had been gathering about the
infant settlement of Astoria, the mind of its projector at New
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: They grub the soil, aye, with their very nails
Dig in the corn-seeds, and with strained neck
O'er the high uplands drag the creaking wains.
No wolf for ambush pries about the pen,
Nor round the flock prowls nightly; pain more sharp
Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags
With hounds now wander by the haunts of men
Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim,
On the shore's confine the wave washes up,
Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there,
Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies,
Georgics |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: matrimonial humiliation. I suppose I must inherit something of
the moral stupidity that would enable her to make a holocaust of
every little personal thing she had of him. There must have been
presents made by him as a lover, for example--books with kindly
inscriptions, letters perhaps, a flattened flower, a ring, or
such-like gage. She kept her wedding-ring, of course, but all
the others she destroyed. She never told me his christian name
or indeed spoke a word to me of him; though at times I came near
daring to ask her: add what I have of him--it isn't much--I got
from his brother, my hero, my uncle Ponderevo. She wore her
ring; her marriage certificate she kept in a sealed envelope in
|
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 Desert Gold by Zane Grey: Thorne and Mercedes were as persons under a spell. The Indian's
strange silence, the feeling of mystery and power he seemed to
create, all that was incomprehensible about him were emphasized in
the light of his slow, sure, and ruthless action. If he dominated
the others, surely he did more for Gale--colored his
thoughts--presage the wild and terrible future of that flight. If
Rojas embodied all the hatred and passion of the peon--scourged
slave for a thousand years--then Yaqui embodied all the darkness,
the cruelty, the white, sun-heated blood, the ferocity, the tragedy
of the desert.
Suddenly the Indian stalked out of the gloom. He mounted Diablo
Desert Gold |
