| 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: his most official manner.
22. Important Arrivals
First entered a band of Ryls from the Happy Valley, all merry little
sprites like fairy elves. A dozen crooked Knooks followed from the
great Forest of Burzee. They had long whiskers and pointed caps and
curling toes, yet were no taller than Button-Bright's shoulder. With
this group came a man so easy to recognize and so important and dearly
beloved throughout the known world, that all present rose to their feet
and bowed their heads in respectful homage, even before the High
Chamberlain knelt to announce his name.
"The most Mighty and Loyal Friend of Children, His Supreme
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 Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: position. She has been roughly schooled by misfortune since then, but
the vague feeling that she is destined for a higher lot has not been
effaced in her.
"A day came at last, however, a fateful day for the poor girl, when
the young countess (who was married by this time) discovered La
Fosseuse arrayed in one of her ball dresses, and dancing before a
mirror. La Fosseuse was no longer anything but a waiting-maid, and the
orphan girl, then sixteen years of age, was dismissed without pity.
Her idle ways plunged her once more into poverty; she wandered about
begging by the roadside, and working at times as I have told you.
Sometimes she thought of drowning herself, sometimes also of giving
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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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have
used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and
gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more
bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things
otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind
to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to
be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind
all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a
deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with
riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
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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 King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth.
So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,
Or I should breathe it so into thy body,
And then it liv'd in sweet Elysium.
To die by thee were but to die in jest;
From thee to die were torture more than death.
O, let me stay, befall what may befall!
QUEEN.
Away! though parting be a fretful corrosive,
It is applied to a deathful wound.
To France, sweet Suffolk; let me hear from thee,
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