| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer conferred like a noble's
star, or an order of knighthood. It threaded its way through the
narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome
dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the artisans and
laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and poor to feel
themselves brethren then; and stalking to and fro across the
Three Hills, with a fierceness which made it almost a new
pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror--that scourge and
horror of our forefathers--the Small-Pox!
We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of
yore, by contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: The Lion went back to the opening where the beasts of the
forest were waiting for him and said proudly:
"You need fear your enemy no longer."
Then the beasts bowed down to the Lion as their King, and he
promised to come back and rule over them as soon as Dorothy was
safely on her way to Kansas.
22. The Country of the Quadlings
The four travelers passed through the rest of the forest in
safety, and when they came out from its gloom saw before them a
steep hill, covered from top to bottom with great pieces of rock.
"That will be a hard climb," said the Scarecrow, "but we must
The Wizard of Oz |
