| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: knowledge of the errand we were come upon. I was besides
encumbered by my duties to Sir William, whom it fell upon me to
entertain; for my lord was quite sunk into a state bordering on
PERVIGILIUM, watching the woods with a rapt eye, sleeping scarce at
all, and speaking sometimes not twenty words in a whole day. That
which he said was still coherent; but it turned almost invariably
upon the party for whom he kept his crazy lookout. He would tell
Sir William often, and always as if it were a new communication,
that he had "a brother somewhere in the woods," and beg that the
sentinels should be directed "to inquire for him." "I am anxious
for news of my brother," he would say. And sometimes, when we were
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: ground. That made an extraordinary long hole, as you may imagine, and
reached far down into the earth; and, as I leaned over it to try to see
to the bottom, I lost my balance and tumbled in. Unfortunately, the
hole led directly into the vast space you see outside this mountain;
but I managed to catch a point of rock that projected from this
cavern, and so saved myself from tumbling headlong into the black
waves beneath, where the tongues of flame that dart out would
certainly have consumed me. Here, then, I made my home; and although
it is a lonely place I amuse myself making rustles and flutters, and
so get along very nicely."
When the braided man had completed this strange tale Dorothy nearly
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: "The uses," says Wolff, "which water serves in human life are
plain to see and need not be described at length. Water is a
universal drink of man and beasts. Even though men have made
themselves drinks that are artificial, they could not do this
without water. Beer is brewed of water and malt, and it is the
water in it which quenches thirst. Wine is prepared from grapes,
which could never have grown without the help of water; and the
same is true of those drinks which in England and other places
they produce from fruit. . . . Therefore since God so planned the
world that men and beasts should live upon it and find there
everything required for their necessity and convenience, he also
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: admiring.' I was here brought up with a reflection
exceedingly just in itself, but which, as the sequel shows, I
failed to profit by. I saw that Marryat, not less than
Homer, Milton, and Virgil, profited by the choice of a
familiar and legendary subject; so that he prepared his
readers on the very title-page; and this set me cudgelling my
brains, if by any chance I could hit upon some similar belief
to be the centre-piece of my own meditated fiction. In the
course of this vain search there cropped up in my memory a
singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which I had
been often told by an uncle of mine, then lately dead,
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