| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: There's some waste money on marbles, the same as M'Cullough tried --
Marbles and mausoleums -- but I call that sinful pride.
There's some ship bodies for burial -- we've carried 'em, soldered and packed;
Down in their wills they wrote it, and nobody called ~them~ cracked.
But me -- I've too much money, and people might. . . . All my fault:
It come o' hoping for grandsons and buying that Wokin' vault.
I'm sick o' the 'ole dam' business; I'm going back where I came.
Dick, you're the son o' my body, and you'll take charge o' the same!
I want to lie by your mother, ten thousand mile away,
And they'll want to send me to Woking; and that's where you'll earn your pay.
I've thought it out on the quiet, the same as it ought to be done --
Verses 1889-1896 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: daughters are charming girls, but they have been cruelly taught that
the world thinks little of beauty without money. What a scene it was!
I entered their house the accomplice in a crime; I left it an honest
man, who had purged his father's memory. Uncle, I don't judge him;
there is such excitement, such passion in a lawsuit that even an
honorable man may be led astray by them. Lawyers can make the most
unjust claims legal; laws have convenient syllogisms to quiet
consciences. My visit was a drama. To BE Providence itself; actually
to fulfil that futile wish, 'If heaven were to send us twenty thousand
francs a year,'--that silly wish we all make, laughing; to bring
opulence to a family sitting by the light of one miserable lamp over a
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic
language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness
that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down her
cheeks.
In the life of all women there comes a moment when they comprehend
their destiny,--when their hitherto mute organization speaks
peremptorily. It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive
involuntary glance, who awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener
it is some unexpected sight, the aspect of scenery, the /coup d'oeil/
of religious pomp, the harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn
veiled in slight mists, the winning notes of some divinest music, or
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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 Rinkitink In Oz by L. Frank Baum: touching him, even for an instant. So, when Dorothy
took her basket of eggs with her, she knew that she was
more powerfully armed than if she had a regiment of
soldiers at her back.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Wizard Finds an Enchantment
After Kaliko had failed in his attempts to destroy his
guests, as has been related, the Nome King did nothing
more to injure them but treated them in a friendly
manner. He refused, however, to permit Inga to see or
to speak with his father and mother, or even to know in
Rinkitink In Oz |
