| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: drop over the first investment that turns up," said Couture.
"That confounded Couture has such a habit of anticipating dividends,
that he is anticipating the end of my tale. Where was I? Oh!
Beaudenord came back. When he took up his abode on the Quai Malaquais,
it came to pass that a thousand francs over and above his needs was
altogether insufficient to keep up his share of a box at the Italiens
and the Opera properly. When he lost twenty-five or thirty louis at
play at one swoop, naturally he paid; when he won, he spent the money;
so should we if we were fools enough to be drawn into a bet.
Beaudenord, feeling pinched with his eighteen thousand francs, saw the
necessity of creating what we to-day call a balance in hand. It was a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: feminine gorgeousness, would argue craftily that he himself was the
most suitable and worthy candidate. This might have been so but for
two equally powerful reasons. First, Sir Philo, brave, skilled, and
thoughtful, was a man of integrity who would never abuse his position
as the king's advisor to advance his own interests, even in a matter
so emotionally and biologically compelling as that before us. The
other reason is that Sir Philo was already in love with another. It
was a gentle love, like a deep river, quiet and calm on the surface
but fully substantial and powerful in its flow.
His happiness, the Lady Lucinda, though not of outward visage the
equal of Jennifrella, was handsome enough for the young knight's
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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 Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and he carried with him the bird-cage containing
Polychrome the Rain-bow's Daughter. Also the Tin Owl
could skip and fly along at a good rate of speed, his
feathers rattling against one another with a tinkling
sound as he moved. But the little Brown Bear, being
stuffed with straw, was a clumsy traveler and the
others had to wait for him to follow.
However, they were not very long in reaching the
ridge that led out of Mrs. Yoop's Valley, and when they
had passed this ridge and descended into the next
valley they stopped to rest, for the Green Monkey was
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
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 Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: shoved Clarence in a box in the baggage car, but after a while
Mr. Snake gets so lonesome he gnaws out and starts to crawl back
to find his master. Just as he is half-way between the baggage
car and the smoker, the couplin' give way--right on that heavy
grade between Custer and Rocky Point. Well, sir, Clarence wound
his head 'round one brake wheel and his tail around the other,
and held that train together to the bottom of the grade. But it
stretched him twenty-eight feet and they had to advertise him as
a boa-constrictor."
Windy Bill's story of the faithful bullsnake aroused to
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