| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: table appeared before her, spread with snowy linen
and laden with golden dishes. But there was no
food upon the table, nor anything else except a
pitcher of water, a bundle of weeds and a handful
of pebbles. But the Giantess poured some water into
her coffee-pot, patted it once or twice with her hand,
and then poured out a cupful of steaming hot coffee.
"Would you like some?" she asked Woot.
He was suspicious of magic coffee, but it smelled so
good that he could not resist it; so he answered: "If
you please, Madam."
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: stationed him on his long sentinel's watch over the city.
The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently
to have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A
flight of red freestone steps, fenced in by a balustrade of
curiously wrought iron, ascends from the court-yard to the
spacious porch, over which is a balcony, with an iron balustrade
of similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. These letters
and figures--16 P.S. 79--are wrought into the iron work of the
balcony, and probably express the date of the edifice, with the
initials of its founder's name. A wide door with double leaves
admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of which is the
Twice Told Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: off the bravest scholar. Why not take something easier?"
Theron had recovered something of his confidence. "Oh, no,"
he said, "that is just what attracts me to Abraham.
I like the complexities and contradictions in his character.
Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode
of Hagar: see the splendid contrast between the craft and
commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech,
and the simple, straightforward godliness of his
later years. No, all those difficulties only attract me.
Do you happen to know--of course you would know--do those
German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: being burnt at Carthage some centuries later, and other similar accounts.
Among the earliest records of the wholesale destruction of Books
is that narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul,
many of the Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their
books together, and burned them before all men: and they
counted the price of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver"
(Acts xix, 19). Doubtless these books of idolatrous divination
and alchemy, of enchantments and witchcraft, were righteously
destroyed by those to whom they had been and might again be
spiritually injurious; and doubtless had they escaped the fire then,
not one of them would have survived to the present time, no MS.
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