| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: to crush your heart, and transfer your life into the world of
abstractions; religion would have absorbed all else, and you would
have lived for an idea, like those saintly women who kill all the
instincts of nature at the foot of the altar. But the all-pervading
charm of Paolo, the loftiness of his mind, his rare and touching
proofs of tenderness, constantly drag you down from that ideal realm
where virtue would fain maintain you; they perennially revive in you
the energies you have exhausted in contending with the phantom of
love. You never suspected this! The faintest glimmer of hope led you
on in pursuit of the sweet vision.
"At last the disappointments of many years have undermined your
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: through the maze of scattered houses. There was the road again,
leading far away into the unknown country beyond.
"King Kik-a-bray says you must not forget his invitation," said the
brown donkey, as they passed through the opening in the wall.
"I shan't," promised Dorothy.
Perhaps no one ever beheld a more strangely assorted group than the
one which now walked along the road, through pretty green fields and
past groves of feathery pepper-trees and fragrant mimosa. Polychrome,
her beautiful gauzy robes floating around her like a rainbow cloud,
went first, dancing back and forth and darting now here to pluck a
wild-flower or there to watch a beetle crawl across the path. Toto ran
The Road to Oz |
