| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum: remember the four and twenty blackbirds that were baked in a pie?
Well, you need not use live blackbirds in your cake, but you could
have some surprise of a different sort."
"Like what?" questioned Dorothy, eagerly.
"If I told you, it wouldn't be YOUR present to Ozma, but MINE,"
answered the Sorceress, with a smile. "Think it over, my dear, and I
am sure you can originate a surprise that will add greatly to the joy
and merriment of Ozma's birthday banquet."
Dorothy thanked her friend and entered the Red Wagon and told the
Sawhorse to take her back home to the palace in the Emerald City.
On the way she thought the matter over seriously of making a
The Magic of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Collection of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: belonging to Peter Rabbit; and
a petticoat, not marked, that
had gone lost in the washing
--and at last the basket was
empty!
THEN Mrs. Tiggy-winkle
made tea--a cup for herself
and a cup for Lucie. They
sat before the fire on a bench
and looked sideways at one
another. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's
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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 Confidence by Henry James: Bernard made a point of satisfying himself that they were as cordial;
he weighed them in the scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed
to him on the whole that there was no relaxation of Gordon's
epistolary tone. If he wrote less often than he used to do,
that was a thing that very commonly happened as men grew older.
The closest intimacies, moreover, had phases and seasons,
intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend had, in fact,
averted his countenance from him, this was simply the accomplishment
of a periodical revolution which would bring them in due order
face to face again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing
tolerably often and writing always in the friendliest tone.
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: between the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind him
sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman,
old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching, with her almost empty
wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay in the prow. One of the
rowers, an old sailor, who had known her in the days of her beauty and
prosperity, had let her come in "for the love of God," in the
beautiful phrase that the common people use.
"Thank you kindly, Thomas," the old woman had said. "I will say two
/Paters/ and two /Aves/ for you in my prayers to-night."
The skipper blew his horn for the last time, looked along the silent
shore, flung off the chain, ran along the side of the boat, and took
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