| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making
a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain
case of waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any
details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now
without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as
to the success of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and
noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour at
once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic
laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to
the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly
more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year
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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 Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: her friends the evening before and had gone to her own rooms.
"She didn't say anything las' night about going anywhere," observed
little Trot.
"No, and that's the strange part of it," replied Dorothy. "Usually
Ozma lets us know of everything she does."
"Why not look in the Magic Picture?" suggested Betsy Bobbin. "That
will tell us where she is in just one second."
"Of course!" cried Dorothy. "Why didn't I think of that before?" And
at once the three girls hurried away to Ozma's boudoir, where the
Magic Picture always hung. This wonderful Magic Picture was one of
the royal Ozma's greatest treasures. There was a large gold frame in
The Lost Princess of Oz |
| 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: hearted, with half-a-dozen children at her back: "You ought not
to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down there;
and it was your duty, as a mother, to have helped that child
through the puddle; while, as for sleeping under that bush, it is
most imprudent and inadmissible?" Why not encourage her, praise
her, cheer her on her weary way by loving words, and keep your
reproofs for yourself--even your advice; for SHE does get on her
way, after all, where YOU could not travel a step forward; and she
knows what she is about perhaps better than you do, and what she
has to endure, and what God thinks of her life-journey. The heart
knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with
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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 The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: "faithful." Observe that the word "religione" was suffered to
stand in the text of the Testina, being used to signify
indifferently every shade of belief, as witness "the religion," a
phrase inevitably employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South
in his Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as
follows: "That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Nicolo
Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his political
scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to the politician,
but the reality of it hurtful and pernicious.'"
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets
anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named
The Prince |
