| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: good, ordinary, common seaman. But you've got imagination, and
foresight, and nerve, and daring, and that's the stuff that
admirals are made of."
"Bless you, T. A.! I knew you'd see the thing as I do after the
first shock was over. It has always been nip and tuck between
the Sans-Silk Company and us. You gave me the hint that showed
me their plans. Now help me follow it up."
Buck picked up his hat, squared his shoulders and fumbled with
his gloves like a bashful schoolboy.
"You--you couldn't kill two birds with one stone on this trip,
could you, Mrs. Mack?"
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: thinking the matter over, and I believe I can make a balloon."
"How?" asked Dorothy.
"A balloon," said Oz, "is made of silk, which is coated with
glue to keep the gas in it. I have plenty of silk in the Palace,
so it will be no trouble to make the balloon. But in all this
country there is no gas to fill the balloon with, to make it float."
"If it won't float," remarked Dorothy, "it will be of no use to us."
"True," answered Oz. "But there is another way to make it
float, which is to fill it with hot air. Hot air isn't as good as
gas, for if the air should get cold the balloon would come down in
the desert, and we should be lost."
The Wizard of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any convenient
landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes
in for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered an ESTAMINET
where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. The
landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or
stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no
mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.
One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the
corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something
else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully
construed by his hearers.
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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 The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Touched the rugged hills with smoothness,
Brought the tender Indian Summer
To the melancholy north-land,
In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes.
Listless, careless Shawondasee!
In his life he had one shadow,
In his heart one sorrow had he.
Once, as he was gazing northward,
Far away upon a prairie
He beheld a maiden standing,
Saw a tall and slender maiden
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