| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rinkitink In Oz by L. Frank Baum: the City of Coregos, she may as well start to-morrow
morning."
Chapter Ten
The Cunning of Queen Cor
You may be sure the Queen of Coregos was not well
pleased to have King Gos and all his warriors living in
her city after they had fled from their own. They were
savage natured and quarrelsome men at all times, and
their tempers had not improved since their conquest by
the Prince of Pingaree. Moreover, they were eating up
Queen Cor's provisions and crowding the houses of her
Rinkitink In Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: I expected the steward to hook my coat on and come out at once.
He was very slow about it; but I dominated my nervousness
sufficiently not to shout after him. Suddenly I became aware
(it could be heard plainly enough) that the fellow for some reason
or other was opening the door of the bathroom. It was the end.
The place was literally not big enough to swing a cat in.
My voice died in my throat and I went stony all over.
I expected to hear a yell of surprise and terror, and made
a movement, but had not the strength to get on my legs.
Everything remained still. Had my second self taken the poor
wretch by the throat? I don't know what I could have done
The Secret Sharer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the
vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity; yet,
make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse of the
period, more and more disconcerted. It lapsed for him with a
strange steady sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him,
independently of the threat of much inconvenience, almost the only
positive surprise his career, if career it could be called, had yet
offered him. She kept the house as she had never done; he had to
go to her to see her--she could meet him nowhere now, though there
was scarce a corner of their loved old London in which she hadn't
in the past, at one time or another, done so; and he found her
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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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: like a lily of the valley wandered to the forest. When we came to
the end of the portage, a perfume like that of cyclamens in
Tyrolean meadows welcomed us, and searching among the loose grasses
by the water-side we found the exquisite purple spikes of the
lesser fringed orchis, loveliest and most ethereal of all the
woodland flowers save one. And what one is that? Ah, my friend,
it is your own particular favourite, the flower, by whatever name
you call it, that you plucked long ago when you were walking in the
forest with your sweetheart,--
"Im wunderschonen Monat Mai
Als alle Knospen sprangen."
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