| 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: Spaniard.
Then I turned my face homewards, for now Anahuac had no king to
rescue, but it chanced that before I went I caught a Tlascalan who
could speak Spanish, and who had deserted from the army of Cortes
because of the hardships that he suffered in their toilsome march.
This man was present at the murder of Guatemoc and his companions,
and heard the Emperor's last words. It seems that some knave had
betrayed to Cortes that an attempt would be made to rescue the
prince, and that thereon Cortes commanded that he should be hung.
It seems also that Guatemoc met his death as he had met the
misfortunes of his life, proudly and without fear. These were his
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: Mr. William Bradford Digery Priest
Mr. Edward Winslow Thomas Williams
Mr. William Brewster Gilbert Winslow
Isaac Allerton Edmund Margesson
Miles Standish Peter Brown
John Alden Richard Bitteridge
John Turner George Soule
Francis Eaton Edward Tilly
James Chilton John Tilly
John Craxton Francis Cooke
John Billington Thomas Rogers
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and
the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious
of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves
seemed to be staring in astonishment.
The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration,
perhaps of improvement. The father and mother were in the old
English style, and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove
were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable,
not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had
more modern minds and manners. There was a numerous family;
but the only two grown up, excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa,
Persuasion |
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 The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: and idealism. Which of them builded for the future? She saw men as wolves,
sharks, snakes, vermin, and opposed to them men as lions and eagles. She
saw women who did not inspire men to fare forth to seek, to imagine, to
dream, to hope, to work, to fight. She began to have a glimmering of what a
woman might be.
That night she wrote swiftly and feverishly, page after page, to Glenn,
only to destroy what she had written. She could not keep her heart out of
her words, nor a hint of what was becoming a sleepless and eternal regret.
She wrote until a late hour, and at last composed a letter she knew did not
ring true, so stilted and restrained was it in all passages save those
concerning news of Glenn's comrade and of her own friends. "I'll
The Call of the Canyon |
