| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: and their poets; and love, that extends his dominion
wherever humanity can be found, perhaps exerts
the same power in the Greenlander's hut as in the
palaces of eastern monarchs.
In one of the large caves to which the families of
Greenland retire together, to pass the cold months,
and which may be termed their villages or cities, a
youth and maid, who came from different parts of
the country, were so much distinguished for their
beauty, that they were called by the rest of the
inhabitants Anningait and Ajut, from a supposed
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of
birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a
girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no
older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
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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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: not endure that the slightest service should be done by others for his
wife. There were days of uncertainty, false hopes, now a little
better, then a crisis,--in short, all the horrible mutations of death
as it wavers, hesitates, and finally strikes. Madame Jules always
found strength to smile at her husband. She pitied him, knowing that
soon he would be alone. It was a double death,--that of life, that of
love; but life grew feebler, and love grew mightier. One frightful
night there was, when Clemence passed through that delirium which
precedes the death of youth. She talked of her happy love, she talked
of her father; she related her mother's revelations on her death-bed,
and the obligations that mother had laid upon her. She struggled, not
Ferragus |
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 Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: and the shaggy man thought he had never seen so many pretty things in
one place before. In one corner played a tinkling fountain of
perfumed water, and in another was a table bearing a golden tray
loaded with freshly gathered fruit, including several of the
red-cheeked apples that the shaggy man loved.
At the farther end of this charming room was an open doorway, and he
crossed over to find himself in a bedroom containing more comforts
than the shaggy man had ever before imagined. The bedstead was of
gold and set with many brilliant diamonds, and the coverlet had
designs of pearls and rubies sewed upon it. At one side of the
bedroom was a dainty dressing-room with closets containing a large
The Road to Oz |
