| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: wouldst thou do?
Clara. Softly, my friend, lest some one should awake! Lest we should
awake ourselves! Know'st thou this phial, Brackenburg? I took it from
thee once in jest, when thou, as was thy wont, didst threaten, in thy
impatience, to end thy days.--And now my friend--
Brackenburg. In the name of all the saints!
Clara. Thou canst not hinder me. Death is my portion! Grudge me not the
quiet and easy death which thou hadst prepared for thyself. Give me thine
hand!--At the moment when I unclose that dismal portal through which
there is no return, I may tell thee, with this pressure of the hand, how
sincerely I have loved, how deeply I have pitied thee. My brother died
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: the age as its meaning stands written before God. Those who
shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps,
how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has
borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the
true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's
blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant
of men, or the blood-thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to
us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the
world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there.
The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as
ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in
the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age;
that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities
of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the
highest pitch. I should have thought that it was the glory of
woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather
than for herself; and therefore I should say--Let her smallest
rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed: but let her
never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to
teach man--what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along,
even in the savage state--namely, that there is something more
|
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 The Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum: those monkeys at once, however, for it will take time to train them and
we'll have to travel a good way to the Gillikin forests where they live."
"I'm ready to go any time," agreed Dorothy. "Shall we ask Ozma to
let us take the Sawhorse?"
The Wizard did not answer that at once. He took time to think of
the suggestion.
"No," he answered at length, "the Red Wagon couldn't get through the
thick forests and there's some danger to us in going into the wild
places to search for monkeys. So I propose we take the Cowardly Lion
and the Hungry Tiger. We can ride on their backs as well as in the
Red Wagon, and if there is danger to us from other beasts, these two
The Magic of Oz |
