| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: companions; I am robbed of my once delightful intercourse with them,
because I discern no vestige of goodwill towards me in their looks.
And as to the wine-cup and slumber--these I guard against, even as a
man might guard against an ambuscade. Think only! to dread a crowd, to
dread solitude, to dread the absence of a guard, to dread the very
guards that guard, to shrink from having those about one's self
unarmed, and yet to hate the sight of armed attendants. Can you
conceive a more troublesome circumstance?[7] But that is not all. To
place more confidence in foreigners than in your fellow-citizens, nay,
in barbarians than in Hellenes, to be consumed with a desire to keep
freemen slaves and yet to be driven, will he nill he, to make slaves
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: bars ("|"). The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced by the word
"pounds".
MISALLIANCE
BY BERNARD SHAW
_Johnny Tarleton, an ordinary young business man of thirty or less, is
taking his weekly Friday to Tuesday in the house of his father, John
Tarleton, who has made a great deal of money out of Tarleton's
Underwear. The house is in Surrey, on the slope of Hindhead; and
Johnny, reclining, novel in hand, in a swinging chair with a little
awning above it, is enshrined in a spacious half hemisphere of glass
which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond it, a barren
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: the birds calling across me. And when I woke it was like early morning,
with the dew on everything.
And the man took my hand and led me to a hidden spot among the rocks. The
ground was very hard, but out of it were sprouting tiny plants, and there
was a little stream running. He said, "This is a garden we are making, no
one else knows of it. We shine here every day; see, the ground has cracked
with our shining, and this little stream is bursting out. See, the flowers
are growing."
And he climbed on the rocks and picked from above two little flowers with
dew on them, and gave them to me. And I took one in each hand; my hands
shone as I held them. He said, "This garden is for all when it is
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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 The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum: house, so that he was obliged to build another; and as he was a poor
man he had to mortgage his farm to get the money to pay for the new
house. Then his health became bad and he was too feeble to work.
The doctor ordered him to take a sea voyage and he went to Australia
and took Dorothy with him. That cost a lot of money, too.
Uncle Henry grew poorer every year, and the crops raised on the farm
only bought food for the family. Therefore the mortgage could not be
paid. At last the banker who had loaned him the money said that if he
did not pay on a certain day, his farm would be taken away from him.
This worried Uncle Henry a good deal, for without the farm he would
have no way to earn a living. He was a good man, and worked in the
The Emerald City of Oz |
