| 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: "Don't know," said Button-Bright.
"Of course you don't. It's too short an acquaintance," returned his
Majesty. "What do you suppose my name is?"
"Don't know," said Button-Bright.
"How should you? Well, I'll tell you. My private name is Dox, but a
King can't be called by his private name; he has to take one that is
official. Therefore my official name is King Renard the Fourth.
Ren-ard with the accent on the 'Ren'."
"What's 'ren'?" asked Button-Bright.
"How clever!" exclaimed the King, turning a pleased face toward his
counselors. "This boy is indeed remarkably bright. 'What's 'ren'?'
The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also that
something sentient which seems to dwell in ships--the creatures
of their hands and the objects of their care.
One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to
memories and seek discourse with the shades, unless one has made
up one's mind to write only in order to reprove mankind for what
it is, or praise it for what it is not, or--generally--to teach
it how to behave. Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer,
nor a sage, I have done none of these things, and I am prepared
to put up serenely with the insignificance which attaches to
persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. But
A Personal Record |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "It is only the beauty of danger, or the danger of beauty" said the
Advanced Lady--"and there you have the ideal of my book--that woman is
nothing but a gift."
I smiled at her very sweetly. "Do you know," I said, "I, too, would like
to write a book, on the advisability of caring for daughters, and taking
them for airings and keeping them out of kitchens!"
I think the masculine element must have felt these angry vibrations: they
ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see
Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining
in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr
Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: men of God had passed along this coast, planting their colonies and
cloisters; but it was not his ocean. In the year that we, a thin strip of
patriots away over on the Atlantic edge of the continent, declared
ourselves an independent nation, a Spanish ship, in the name of Saint
Francis, was unloading the centuries of her own civilization at the
Golden Gate. San Diego had come earlier. Then, slowly, as mission after
mission was built along the soft coast wilderness, new ports were
established--at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo,
which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the
hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land,
through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that
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