| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: is an outpost of light upon Inchkeith, and far to
seaward, yet another on the May.
And while you are looking, across upon the Castle
Hill, the drums and bugles begin to recall the scattered
garrison; the air thrills with the sound; the bugles sing
aloud; and the last rising flourish mounts and melts into
the darkness like a star: a martial swan-song, fitly
rounding in the labours of the day.
CHAPTER IX.
WINTER AND NEW YEAR.
THE Scotch dialect is singularly rich in terms of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: apparently no word from God and not worship of God in Israel. For
Elijah says, "Lord, they have killed your prophets and destroyed
your altars, and I am left totally alone" [I Kings 19]. Here King
Ahab and others could have said, "Elijah, with talk like that you
are condemning all the people of God." However God had at the
same time kept seven thousand [I Kings 19]. How? Do you not also
think that God could now, under the papacy, have preserved his
own, even though the priests and monks of Christendom have been
teachers of the devil and gone to hell? Many children and young
people have died in Christ. For even under the anti-Christ,
Christ has strongly sustained baptism, the bare text of the gospel
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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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: of the clock the ambiguous figure, gaining substance and
character, showed itself even to her weak sight as her husband's;
and she turned away to meet him, as he entered, with the
confession of her folly.
"It's really too absurd," she laughed out from the threshold,
"but I never CAN remember!"
"Remember what?" Boyne questioned as they drew together.
"That when one sees the Lyng ghost one never knows it."
Her hand was on his sleeve, and he kept it there, but with no
response in his gesture or in the lines of his fagged,
preoccupied face.
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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 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: about the Saw-Horse later on.
The time dragged wearily enough to the eager watchers, but finally the
Wizard announced that four o'clock had arrived, and Dorothy caught up
the kitten and began to make the signal that had been agreed upon to
the far-away invisible Ozma.
"Nothing seems to happen," said Zeb, doubtfully.
"Oh, we must give Ozma time to put on the Magic Belt," replied the girl.
She had scarcely spoken the words then she suddenly disappeared from
the cave, and with her went the kitten. There had been no sound of
any kind and no warning. One moment Dorothy sat beside them with the
kitten in her lap, and a moment later the horse, the piglets, the
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
