| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "That is clear enough; but where does the joke
come in?'"
Dorothy laughed, for she couldn't help it,
although all the others were solemn enough.
"I'll tell you where the joke comes in," she
said, and took the Hoppers away to a distance,
where the Horners could not hear them. "You know,"
she then explained, "those neighbors of yours are
not very bright, poor things, and what they think
is a joke isn't a joke at all--it's true, don't
you see?"
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: November 22, 1993, on the day of the 30th anniversary
of his assassination.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
#STARTMARK#
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: In silence the three men followed the new trail,
all puzzled beyond measure to account for the death
of Number One at the hands of what must have been a
creature of superhuman strength. What could it have
been! It was impossible that any of the Malays or
lascars could have done the thing, and there were no
other creatures, brute or human, upon the island large
enough to have coped even for an instant with the
ferocious brutality of the dead monster, except--
von Horn's brain came to a sudden halt at the thought.
Could it be? There seemed no other explanation.
The Monster Men |
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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: his eyes again went over the semi-circle before him, for where
death may lurk behind every foot of vegetation, every bump or
hillock, the plainsman leaves as little as may be to chance. No
faintest movement could escape the sheepman's eyes, no least stir
fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many minutes he waited in vain,
and the delay told him that he had to do with a trained hunter
rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For somewhere in the
rough country before him his enemy lay motionless, every faculty
alive to the least hint of his presence.
It was the whirring flight of a startled dove that told Bannister
the whereabouts of his foe. Two hundred yards from him the bird
|
