| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: Elizabeth" there was many a milkmaid whom the wise man would have
chosen for his friend, before the royal red-haired virgin. "I
confess," says the poet Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all
things. A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, a
little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall
in Love again, (which is a great Passion, and therefore, I hope, I
have done with it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather
than with Majestical Beauty. I would neither wish that my
Mistress, nor my Fortune, should be a Bona Roba, as Homer uses to
describe his Beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the
stateliness and largeness of her Person, but as Lucretius says:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: country and almost all of its numerous inhabitants. Next
to Ozma she was loved better than anyone in all Oz, for
Dorothy was simple and sweet, seldom became angry and had
such a friendly, chummy way that she made friends
where-ever she wandered. It was she who first brought the
Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion to
the Emerald City. Dorothy had also introduced to Ozma
the Shaggy Man and the Hungry Tiger, as well as Billina
the Yellow Hen, Eureka the Pink Kitten, and many other
delightful characters and creatures. Coming as she did
from our world, Dorothy was much like many other girls we
The Scarecrow of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: conducted by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks,
factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks-factories producing
condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars. Then the business
center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed trolleys unloading, and
high doorways of marble and polished granite.
It was big--and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in mountains, jewels,
muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted moment, the lyric
and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of the outlying factory
suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely eroded banks; of the
orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and all the fat dairy land and
big barns and comfortable herds. As he dropped his passenger he cried, "Gosh,
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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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: frantic leaps, plunges, dives and straddles.
When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing
horses, making them swing their heads and move their feet,
disturbing a solid dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools,
for he himself could perceive that Providence had caused it clearly
to be written, that he and his team had the unalienable right to stand
in the proper path of the sun chariot, and if they so minded,
obstruct its mission or take a wheel off.
And, perhaps, if the god-driver had an ungovernable desire to
step down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute the
right of way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by a
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
