| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and that the signal from the bank was one that had been
determined upon before they left the village.
In a few moments the dugouts drew up to the verdure-clad bank.
The native warriors filed out, and with them a half-dozen
white men. Sullen, ugly-looking customers they were,
and none more so than the evil-faced, black-bearded man
who commanded them.
"Where is the white man your messengers report to be
with you?" he asked of the chief.
"This way, bwana," replied the native. "Carefully have
I kept silence in the village that he might be still asleep when
The Beasts of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: on the contrary, his robe of state is composed of his fellow-
servants. His whole back is covered with a little grey forest of
branching hairs, fine as a spider's web, each branchlet carrying
its little pearly ringed club, each club its rose-coloured polype,
like (to quote Mr. Gosse's comparison) the unexpanded birds of the
acacia. (28)
On that leg grows, amid another copse of the grey polypes, a
delicate straw-coloured Sertularia, branch on branch of tiny double
combs, each tooth of the comb being a tube containing a living
flower; on another leg another Sertularia, coarser, but still
beautiful; and round it again has trained itself, parasitic on the
|
