| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: I had trained them from babyhood till their hearts were English and
not Aztec, as were their speech and faith, and thus they were not
only my dear children, but companions of my own race, the only ones
I had. And now by accident, by sickness, and by the sword, they
were dead the three of them, and I was desolate.
Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should a
sweetheart give us the go by we fill the world with moans and swear
that it holds no comfort for us. But when we bend our heads before
the shrouded shape of some lost child, then it is that for the
first time we learn how terrible grief can be. Time, they tell us,
will bring consolation, but it is false, for such sorrows time has
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: vengeance upon the author of her wrongs. To Werper she
gave little thought. The fact that the knife had been
in his hand when it departed from Opar brought down no
thoughts of vengeance upon his head. Of course, he
should be slain when captured; but his death would give
La no pleasure--she looked for that in the contemplated
death agonies of Tarzan. He should be tortured.
His should be a slow and frightful death. His punishment
should be adequate to the immensity of his crime.
He had wrested the sacred knife from La; he had lain
sacreligious hands upon the High Priestess of the
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
