| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and thoughtful, and all her friends looked at her uneasily.
"Don't you do it!" exclaimed Dorothy. "If you guess wrong, you will
be enslaved yourself."
"But I shall have eleven guesses," answered Ozma. "Surely I ought to
guess one object in eleven correctly; and, if I do, I shall rescue one
of the royal family and be safe myself. Then the rest of you may
attempt it, and soon we shall free all those who are enslaved."
"What if we fail?" enquired the Scarecrow. "I'd look nice as a piece
of bric-a-brac, wouldn't I?"
"We must not fail!" cried Ozma, courageously. "Having come all this
distance to free these poor people, it would be weak and cowardly in
Ozma of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: and he embraced his mother, and Dictys his good foster-
father, and they wept over each other a long while, for it
was seven years and more since they had met.
Then Perseus went out, and up to the hall of Polydectes; and
underneath the goat-skin he bore the Gorgon's head.
And when he came into the hall, Polydectes sat at the table-
head, and all his nobles and landowners on either side, each
according to his rank, feasting on the fish and the goat's
flesh, and drinking the blood-red wine. The harpers harped,
and the revellers shouted, and the wine-cups rang merrily as
they passed from hand to hand, and great was the noise in the
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: various little attentions which for eighteen months had made life
sweet to him. Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study
trifles, Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four
circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him
indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was
evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slipppers, in
Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his
candlestick to the table of the antechamber, and in the evident
intention to keep him waiting in the rain.
When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and
Marianne had departed without saying, as usual, "Does Monsieur want
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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 Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: And what faces! Imagine if you can a cross between
a sheep and a gorilla, and you will have some concep-
tion of the physiognomy of the creature that bent
close above me, and of those of the half-dozen others
that clustered about. There was the facial length and
great eyes of the sheep, and the bull-neck and hideous
fangs of the gorilla. The bodies and limbs were both
man and gorilla-like.
As they bent over me they conversed in a mono-
syllabic tongue that was perfectly intelligible to me. It
was something of a simplified language that had no
Pellucidar |
