| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: much old as antiquated and strangely out of place, who had left her
husband, and was travelling all the way to Kansas by herself. We had
to take her own word that she was married; for it was sorely
contradicted by the testimony of her appearance. Nature seemed to
have sanctified her for the single state; even the colour of her hair
was incompatible with matrimony, and her husband, I thought, should
be a man of saintly spirit and phantasmal bodily presence. She was
ill, poor thing; her soul turned from the viands; the dirty
tablecloth shocked her like an impropriety; and the whole strength of
her endeavour was bent upon keeping her watch true to Glasgow time
till she should reach New York. They had heard reports, her husband
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: tedious of it; and he's of a most facinerious spirit that will
not acknowledge it to be the,--
LAFEU.
Very hand of heaven.
PAROLLES.
Ay; so I say.
LAFEU.
In a most weak,--
PAROLLES.
And debile minister, great power, great transcendence: which
should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone
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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 Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: our friend Thoburn has not kept a summer hotel for nothing. It
is notoriously weak, especially as to stomach. You may feed 'em
prunes and whole-wheat bread and apple sauce, and after a while
they'll forget the fat days, and remember only the lean and
hungry ones. But let some student of human nature at the proper
moment introduce just one fat day, one feast, one revel--"
"Talk English," I said sharply.
"Don't break in on my flights of fancy," he objected. "If you
want the truth, Thoburn is going to have a party--a forbidden
feast. He's going to rouse again the sleeping dogs of appetite,
and send them ravening back to the Plaza, to Sherry's and Del's
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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 Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: you I'm right,"
Billina showed her the place where she had "stubbed her bill," as she
expressed it, and Dorothy dug away the sand until she felt something
hard. Then, thrusting in her hand, she pulled the thing out, and
discovered it to be a large sized golden key--rather old, but still
bright and of perfect shape.
"What did I tell you?" cried the hen, with a cackle of triumph. "Can
I tell metal when I bump into it, or is the thing a rock?"
"It's metal, sure enough," answered the child, gazing thoughtfully at
the curious thing she had found. "I think it is pure gold, and it must
have lain hidden in the sand for a long time. How do you suppose it came
Ozma of Oz |
