| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Yes," said she. "I married Chopfyt a long time ago,
because my other two sweethearts had deserted me."
This reproof embarrassed both Nick Chopper and
Captain Fyter. They looked down, shamefaced, for a
moment, and then the Tin Woodman explained in an
earnest voice:
"I rusted."
"So did I," said the Tin Soldier.
"I could not know that, of course," asserted Nimmie
Amee. "All I knew was that neither of you came to marry
me, as you had promised to do. But men are not scarce
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: "You sneer at Comte? Because, having the clearest eye, the
widest sweeping eye ever given to man, he had no more? It was to
show how far flesh can go alone. Could he help it, if God
refused the prophet's vision?"
"I'm sure, Samuel," interrupted his wife with a sorrowful
earnestness, "your own eyes were as strong as a man's could be.
It was ten years after I wore spectacles that you began. Only
for that miserable fever, you could read shorthand now."
Her own blue eyes filled with tears. There was a sudden silence.
Margret shivered, as if some pain stung her. Holding her
father's bony hand in hers, she patted it on her knee. The hand
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: couldn't believe him. And a month afterward I landed on the coast of
this Gaudymala with $1,300 that I had been saving up for five years.
I thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself accordingly.
I loaded down four pack-mules with red woollen blankets, wrought-iron
pails, jewelled side-combs for the ladies, glass necklaces, and
safety-razors. I hired a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule-
driver and an interpreter too. It turned out that he could interpret
mules all right, but he drove the English language much too hard. His
name sounded like a Yale key when you push it in wrong side up, but I
called him McClintock, which was close to the noise.
"Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the mountains, and it
Options |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: made boldly just now.
It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good
or bad, when the people of England are properly represented.
In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who
suffer most from epidemics should have some little share in the
appointment of the men on whose votes extermination of epidemics
now mainly depends. But that is too large a question to argue
here. Let the Government see to it in the coming session.
Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be
extended in the direction of the working man, let it be extended,
at least in some equal degree, in the direction of the educated
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