| 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: commend itself to his evil heart should it be in his power to join
it, and a strange instinct told me that he was NOT dead. But
neither dead nor living was he among those men who entered Mexico
that day.
That night I saw Guatemoc and asked him how things went.
'Well for the kite that roosts in the dove's nest,' he answered
with a bitter laugh, 'but very ill for the dove. Montezuma, my
uncle, has been cooing yonder,' and he pointed to the palace of
Axa, 'and the captain of the Teules has cooed in answer, but though
he tried to hide it, I could hear the hawk's shriek in his pigeon's
note. Ere long there will be merry doings in Tenoctitlan.'
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: had left leaning against the wall as they had rushed out
with drawn swords to prevent the theft of their prisoner.
Few red men are good shots, for the sword is their
chosen weapon; so now as the Dusarian drew bead upon
the rising flier, and touched the button upon his rifle's
stock, it was more to chance than proficiency that he
owed the partial success of his aim.
The projectile grazed the flier's side, the opaque
coating breaking sufficiently to permit daylight to
strike in upon the powder phial within the bullet's nose.
There was a sharp explosion. Carthoris felt his craft reel
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: seen death more closely, but had in a manner felt it more deeply.
He had formed little by little the habit of numbering his Dead: it
had come to him early in life that there was something one had to
do for them. They were there in their simplified intensified
essence, their conscious absence and expressive patience, as
personally there as if they had only been stricken dumb. When all
sense of them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if their
purgatory were really still on earth: they asked so little that
they got, poor things, even less, and died again, died every day,
of the hard usage of life. They had no organised service, no
reserved place, no honour, no shelter, no safety. Even ungenerous
|
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: heart of the family, and of which we shall presently make mention,
came as the precursor of renewed trials.
In January, 1826, on the day when Havre had unanimously chosen Charles
Mignon as its deputy, three letters, arriving from New York, Paris,
and London, fell with the destruction of a hammer upon the crystal
palace of his prosperity. In an instant ruin like a vulture swooped
down upon their happiness, just as the cold fell in 1812 upon the
grand army in Russia. One night sufficed Charles Mignon to decide upon
his course, and he spent it in settling his accounts with Dumay. All
he owned, not excepting his furniture, would just suffice to pay his
creditors.
Modeste Mignon |
