| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: had shared with them some sort of breakfast which he had invented,
and had then gone away, confiding them to that good mother,
the street, who had brought him up, almost entirely. On leaving them,
he had appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening,
and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell: "I break a cane,
otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court,
I file off. If you don't find papa and mamma, young 'uns, come back
here this evening. I'll scramble you up some supper, and I'll give
you a shakedown." The two children, picked up by some policeman
and placed in the refuge, or stolen by some mountebank, or having
simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris,
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: have the good fortune to stand quarter-master?"
"Truly, my lord," said the trooper, "my name is Dalgetty--Dugald
Dalgetty, Ritt-master Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, at your
honourable service to command. It is a name you may have seen in
GALLO BELGICUS, the SWEDISH INTELLIGENCER, or, if you read High
Dutch, in the FLIEGENDEN MERCOEUR of Leipsic. My father, my
lord, having by unthrifty courses reduced a fair patrimony to a
nonentity, I had no better shift, when I was eighteen years auld,
than to carry the learning whilk I had acquired at the Mareschal-
College of Aberdeen, my gentle bluid and designation of
Drumthwacket, together with a pair of stalwarth arms, and legs
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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 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: "What an awful fight!" said Dorothy, catching her breath in little gasps.
"Oh, I don't know," purred Eureka, smoothing her ruffled fur with her
paw; "we didn't manage to hurt anybody, and nobody managed to hurt us."
"Thank goodness we are together again, even if we are prisoners,"
sighed the little girl.
"I wonder why they didn't kill us on the spot," remarked Zeb, who had
lost his king in the struggle.
"They are probably keeping us for some ceremony," the Wizard answered,
reflectively; "but there is no doubt they intend to kill us as dead as
possible in a short time."
"As dead as poss'ble would be pretty dead, wouldn't it?" asked Dorothy.
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: your teeth at the dread Seat of Judgment.' The wench wouldn't
listen; she stuck to her silly, 'It's you I love!' and nothing
more could I get out of her.
"Vasya came back on the Saturday before Trinity, early in the
morning. From my fence I could see everything; he ran into the
house, and came back a minute later with Kuzka in his arms, and
he was laughing and crying all at once; he was kissing Kuzka and
looking up at the hay-loft, and hadn't the heart to put the child
down, and yet he was longing to go to his pigeons. He was always
a soft sort of chap -- sentimental. That day passed off very
well, all quiet and proper. They had begun ringing the church
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