| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: a comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure,
distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, so
much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the eternal
womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the race should
labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or toilers for the
children he brings into the world, provided the reward they receive is not
large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any time desire to enter.
When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed a
steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across
sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they were
come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, green
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: the wicker castle, it was evident they must find a way to escape, but
their first duty was to attend to the errand on which they had come
and seek the Royal Ozma, whom they believed to be a prisoner of the
magician, and rescue her.
They found they had entered a square courtyard, from which an entrance
led into the main building of the castle. No person had appeared to
greet them so far, although a gaudy peacock perched upon the wall
cackled with laughter and said in its sharp, shrill voice, "Poor
fools! Poor fools!"
"I hope the peacock is mistaken," remarked the Frogman, but no one
else paid any attention to the bird. They were a little awed by the
The Lost Princess of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: in any way afflicted, but would cast stones at them and drive them
forth on to the highway, and bid them beg their bread elsewhere, so
that none save the outlaws came twice to that village to ask for
alms. Indeed, he was as one enamoured of beauty, and would mock at
the weakly and ill-favoured, and make jest of them; and himself he
loved, and in summer, when the winds were still, he would lie by
the well in the priest's orchard and look down at the marvel of his
own face, and laugh for the pleasure he had in his fairness.
Often did the Woodcutter and his wife chide him, and say: 'We did
not deal with thee as thou dealest with those who are left
desolate, and have none to succour them. Wherefore art thou so
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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 Critias by Plato: attempered climate. Now the city in those days was arranged on this wise.
In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact is that a
single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and laid bare the
rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and then occurred the
extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction
of Deucalion. But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to
the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the
Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well
covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans,
and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior
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