| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: got entangled among some rather low-class streets on the other side
of Campden Hill, and I began to think that for once the game would
be against me and that I should get to school late. I tried rather
desperately a street that seemed a cul de sac, and found a
passage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. 'I
shall do it yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops
that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my
long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted
garden!
"The thing whacked upon me suddenly. Then, after all, that garden,
that wonderful garden, wasn't a dream!" . . . .
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: thoughtful.
"Your Majesty," she said to Ozma, "the Skeezers live
on a Magic Isle in a great lake. For that reason --
because the Skeezers deal in magic -- I can learn
little about them."
"Why, I didn't know there was a lake in that part of
Oz," exclaimed Ozma. "The map shows a river running
through the Skeezer Country, but no lake."
"That is because the person who made the map never
had visited that part of the country," explained the
Sorceress. "The lake surely is there, and in the lake
Glinda of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Crimean War.
"The use of wire rigging became general about that time too," he
observed. "I was a very young master then. That was before you
were born."
"Yes, sir. I am of the year 1857."
"The Mutiny year," he commented, as if to himself, adding in a
louder tone that his ship happened then to be in the Gulf of
Bengal, employed under a Government charter.
Clearly the transport service had been the making of this
examiner, who so unexpectedly had given me an insight into his
existence, awakening in me the sense of the continuity of that
Some Reminiscences |
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 Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Whereas Sara Lee was, now and forever, for all the world, her hands
consecrated to bind up its little wounds and to soothe its great ones.
Harvey craved a cheap and easy peace. She wanted no peace except that
bought by service, the peace of a tired body, the peace of the little
house in Belgium where, after days of torture, weary men found quiet
and ease and the cheer of the open door.
XXIX
Late in October Sara Lee went back to the little house of mercy; went
unaccredited, and with her own money. She had sold her bit of property.
In London she went to the Traverses, as before. But with a difference
too. For Sara Lee had learned the strangeness of the English, who are
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