| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: singer, and often he came beneath her windows to let her hear his
melodiously melancholy voice, when Beauvouloir by a sign informed him
she was alone. Formerly, as a babe, he had consoled his mother with
his smiles, now, become a poet, he caressed her with his melodies.
"Those songs give me life," said the duchess to Beauvouloir, inhaling
the air that Etienne's voice made living.
At length the day came when the poor son's mourning began. Already he
had felt the mysterious correspondences between his emotions and the
movements of the ocean. The divining of the thoughts of matter, a
power with which his occult knowledge had invested him, made this
phenomenon more eloquent to him than to all others. During the fatal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: be neither gold nor city left."
"Nor Indians either, I'll warrant the butchers; but, lad, I am
promised to Humphrey; I have a bark fitting out already, and all I
have, and more, adventured in her; so Manoa must wait."
"It will wait well enough, if the Spaniards prosper no better on
the Amazon than they have done; but must I come with you? To tell
the truth, I am quite shore-sick, and to sea I must go. What will
my mother say?"
"I'll manage thy mother," said Raleigh; and so he did; for, to cut
a long story short, he went back the month after, and he not only
took home letters from Amyas to his mother, but so impressed on
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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 A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: "Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself,
you mean. Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift,
you do the same for a dozen. The idea of YOUR swelling
around the country and petting yourself with the nickname
of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be
such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off.
Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried MY
best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous
charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my hands
of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's
what you are."
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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 Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: and tumbled heels over head into the water. Down he went, out of
sight entirely, so that only his sailor hat floated on the top of
the Truth Pond.
He soon bobbed up, and the shaggy man seized him by his sailor
collar and dragged him to the shore, dripping and gasping for breath.
They all looked upon the boy wonderingly, for the fox head with its
sharp nose and pointed ears was gone, and in its place appeared the
chubby round face and blue eyes and pretty curls that had belonged to
Button-Bright before King Dox of Foxville transformed him.
"Oh, what a darling!" cried Polly, and would have hugged the little
one had he not been so wet.
The Road to Oz |
