| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: times and in all circumstances. Perhaps it is better to be a machine
that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a
dead truth is better than a live falsehood.
About noon the travelers reached a large field of pumpkins--a
vegetable quite appropriate to the yellow country of the Winkies--and
some of the pumpkins which grew there were of remarkable size. Just
before they entered upon this field they saw three little mounds that
looked like graves, with a pretty headstone to each one of them.
"What is this?" asked Dorothy, in wonder.
"It's Jack Pumpkinhead's private graveyard," replied the Tin Woodman.
"But I thought nobody ever died in Oz," she said.
The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I
was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said
the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term
meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I
have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could
have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they
were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just
at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had
made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking
about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see
that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a
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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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: 'Jump out when I give the word.'
"Did I say there was no end of huskies? Well, there was no end.
Here, there, everywhere, they were scattered about,--tame wolves
and nothing less. When the strain runs thin they breed them in
the bush with the wild, and they're bitter fighters. Right at the
toe of my moccasin lay a big brute, and by the heel another. I
doubled the first one's tail, quick, till it snapped in my grip.
As his jaws clipped together where my hand should have been, I
threw the second one by the scruff straight into his mouth. 'Go!'
I cried to Tilly.
"You know how they fight. In the wink of an eye there was a
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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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: cyclopedias; life, he would say, was his volume. His lectures
were not meant, he would declare, for college professors; they
were addressed direct to 'the great heart of the people', and the
heart of the people must certainly be sounder than its head, for
his lucubrations were received with favour. That entitled 'How to
Live Cheerfully on Forty Pounds a Year', created a sensation
among the unemployed. 'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes,
and Desirability', gained him the respect of the shallow-minded.
As for his celebrated essay on 'Life Insurance Regarded in its
Relation to the Masses', read before the Working Men's Mutual
Improvement Society, Isle of Dogs, it was received with a
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