| 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: grew quite dark and the boy was weary with his long
walk, they halted right in the middle of a field and
allowed Woot to get his supper from the food he carried
in his knapsack. Then the Scarecrow laid himself down,
so that Woot could use his stuffed body as a pillow,
and the Tin Woodman stood up beside them all night, so
the dampness of the ground might not rust his joints or
dull his brilliant polish. Whenever the dew settled on
his body he carefully wiped it off with a cloth, and so
in the morning the Emperor shone as brightly as ever in
the rays of the rising sun.
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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation
for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.
The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop.
In those days the world was agitated about the wondrous doings of
Mr. St. John Long, "noblemen and gentlemen" attesting his extraction
of a fluid like mercury from the temples of a patient.
Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Bulstrode
had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion
is sure to like other sorts of charlatans."
"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number
of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the while; "there are
Middlemarch |
