| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Hush, dear," said the little girl, trying to comfort him; "we don't
any of us want to be soup. But don't worry; the shaggy man will take
care of us."
"Will he?" asked Polychrome, who did not like the Scoodlers at all,
and kept close to Dorothy.
"I'll try," promised the shaggy man; but he looked worried.
Happening just then to feel the Love Magnet in his pocket,
he said to the creatures, with more confidence:
"Don't you love me?"
"Yes!" they shouted, all together.
"Then you mustn't harm me, or my friends," said the shaggy man, firmly.
The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: "It is hard, then, you should hesitate about his wife," said she.
I saw all at once, like the rending of a veil, how nobly she had
borne this unnatural calamity, and how generously my reproaches.
"We must go back and tell this to my lord," said I.
"Him I cannot face," she cried.
"You will find him the least moved of all of us," said I.
"And yet I cannot face him," said she.
"Well," said I, "you can return to Mr. Henry; I will see my lord."
As we walked back, I bearing the candlesticks, she the sword - a
strange burthen for that woman - she had another thought. "Should
we tell Henry?" she asked.
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the soil is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated
to a quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the
passage. Thus a radiance has been created even out of the fiery
and sulphurous curse that rests forever upon the valley--a
radiance hurtful, however, to the eyes, and somewhat bewildering,
as I discovered by the changes which it wrought in the visages of
my companions. In this respect, as compared with natural
daylight, there is the same difference as between truth and
falsehood, but if the reader have ever travelled through the dark
Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he
could get--if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which
she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise
again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things:
among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and
tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of
teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each
other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each
other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called
"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the
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