| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Nome, looking at him curiously.
"Of course," declared Kiki. I can transform you into a stick of
wood, in a flash, or into a stone, and leave you here by the roadside."
"The wicked Nome shivered a little when he heard that, but it made
him long more than ever to possess the great secret. After a while
he said:
"I'll tell you what I'll do. If you will help me to conquer Oz and
to transform the Oz people, who are my enemies, into sticks or stones,
by telling me your secret, I'll agree to make YOU the Ruler of all Oz,
and I will be your Prime Minister and see that your orders are obeyed."
"I'll help do that," said Kiki, "but I won't tell you my secret."
The Magic of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: abstractions, the saving reality, the voice that answered back.
There was no support that night in the things that had been. We
were alone together on the cliff for ever more!--that was very
pretty in its way, but it had no truth whatever that could help me
now, no ounce of sustaining value. I wanted Isabel that night, no
sentiment or memory of her, but Isabel alive,--to talk to me, to
touch me, to hold me together. I wanted unendurably the dusky
gentleness of her presence, the consolation of her voice.
We were alone together on the cliff! I startled a passing cabman
into interest by laughing aloud at that magnificent and
characteristic sentimentality. What a lie it was, and how
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: The reason of the dangers of this particular coast are found in the
situation of the county and in the course of ships sailing this
way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:- The shore from
the mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roads lies in a
straight line from SSE. TO NNW., the land being on the W. or
larboard side.
From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point of land in
the county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyond Yarmouth, the
shore falls off for nearly sixty miles to the west, as far as Lynn
and Boston, till the shore of Lincolnshire tends north again for
about sixty miles more as far as the Humber, whence the coast of
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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 War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: to think how swiftly that desolating change had come.
For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out
of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left
alive. Hard by the top of Putney Hill I came upon another
skeleton, with the arms dislocated and removed several
yards from the rest of the body. As I proceeded I became
more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind
was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished
in this part of the world. The Martians, I thought, had gone
on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere.
Perhaps even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or
War of the Worlds |
