| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: CHAPTER 4
AMONG THE WINKIES
The settled parts of the Winkie Country are full of happy and
contented people who are ruled by a tin Emperor named Nick Chopper,
who in turn is a subject of the beautiful girl Ruler, Ozma of Oz. But
not all of the Winkie Country is fully settled. At the east, which
part lies nearest the Emerald City, there are beautiful farmhouses and
roads, but as you travel west, you first come to a branch of the
Winkie River, beyond which there is a rough country where few people
live, and some of these are quite unknown to the rest of the world.
After passing through this rude section of territory, which no one
The Lost Princess of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a
stern-wheeler from away North which was bound for one of
them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana way,
and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi
and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm
in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis;
not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers,
and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing,
and was very quiet. We was four days getting out of
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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 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: wot never, but God knoweth; but in what wise that men worship it,
the blessed Saint John holds him a-paid.
From this city of Sebast unto Jerusalem is twelve mile. And
between the hills of that country there is a well that four sithes
in the year changeth his colour, sometime green, sometime red,
sometime clear and sometime trouble; and men clepe that well, Job.
And the folk of that country, that men clepe Samaritans, were
converted and baptized by the apostles; but they hold not well
their doctrine, and always they hold laws by themselves, varying
from Christian men, from Saracens, Jews and Paynims. And the
Samaritans lieve well in one God, and they say well that there is
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural enough.
How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so clear,
but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing,"
a proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her,
so that she shook her head over it without further speculation.
In less than an hour Lydgate arrived. Bulstrode met him outside
the wainscoted parlor, where Raffles was, and said--
"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once
in my employment, many years ago. Afterwards he went to America,
and returned I fear to an idle dissolute life. Being destitute,
he has a claim on me. He was slightly connected with Rigg,
Middlemarch |
