| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "That was very kind of you," said Shaggy. "But
Your Highness must permit me to report that my own
mission here is now ended. I have found my lost
brother, and he is now beside me, freed from the
enchantment of ugliness which Ruggedo cast upon
him. Tik-Tok has served me and my comrades
faithfully, as you requested him to do, and I hope
you will now transport the Clockwork Man back to
your fairyland of Oz."
"I will do that," replied Ozma. "But how
about yourself, Shaggy?"
Tik-Tok of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: father's soul; but Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a
flood of relenting and pity. When death, the great Reconciler,
has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our
severity.
Chapter V
The Rector
BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain,
and the water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks
in the garden of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had
been cruelly tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all
the delicate-stemmed border flowers had been dashed down and
Adam Bede |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: Seven and Ten. This line describes the year when these events
shall happen. Seven and ten makes seventeen, which I explain
seventeen hundred, and this number added to nine, makes the year
we are now in; for it must be understood of the natural year,
which begins the first of January.
Tamys Rivere twys, etc. The River Thames, frozen twice in one
year, so as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident, which
perhaps hath not fallen out for several hundred years before, and
is the reason why some astrologers have thought that this
prophecy could never be fulfilled, because they imagine such a
thing would never happen in our climate.
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some
tempestuous evening; now sitting each at her window,
looking out upon the summer landscape sloping far below
them towards the firth, and the field-paths where they
had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew
upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands
began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily,
growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until
one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach
of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary
be overstepped for ever.
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