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: man; "it would be a handy thing to have around."
"I am not so sure of that, sir," answered the Tin Woodman. "A while
ago the crooked Sorcerer who invented the Magic Powder fell down a
precipice and was killed. All his possessions went to a relative--an
old woman named Dyna, who lives in the Emerald City. She went to the
mountains where the Sorcerer had lived and brought away everything she
thought of value. Among them was a small bottle of the Powder of
Life; but of course Dyna didn't know it was a Magic Powder, at all. It
happened she had once had a big blue bear for a pet; but the bear
choked to death on a fishbone one day, and she loved it so dearly
that Dyna made a rug of its skin, leaving the head and four paws on
 The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: working together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand
times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor,
and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent.
Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of stupidity--you strike a
man, and he seems convinced, he nods his head--everything is settled;
next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind as
ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you understand
that you are not dealing with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses
shape in the sunshine.
These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human energy on barren
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