| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: but it isn't. Come on into the city; we've been wasting our time."
With this, she danced into the wall again and once more disappeared.
Button-Bright, who was rather venture-some, dashed away after her and
also became invisible to them. The others followed more cautiously,
stretching out their hands to feel the wall and finding, to their
astonishment, that they could feel nothing because nothing opposed
them. They walked on a few steps and found themselves in the streets
of a very beautiful city. Behind them they again saw the wall, grim
and forbidding as ever, but now they knew it was merely an illusion
prepared to keep strangers from entering the city.
But the wall was soon forgotten, for in front of them were a number of
The Lost Princess of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: his head with such get-nowhere questions! He dismissed them
roughly, but new processes of thought had been opened, new
emotions awakened.
Meanwhile, little Rose's response to his clumsy tenderness taught
him many unsuspected lessons. He never would have believed the
pleasure there could be in simply watching a child's eyes light
with glee over a five-cent bag of candy. It began to be a regular
thing for him to bring one home from Fallon, each trip, and the
gay hunts that followed as she searched for it--sometimes to find
the treasure in Martin's hat, sometimes under the buggy seat,
sometimes in a knobby hump under the table-cloth at her
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forget themselves in
the pursuit of such pretty conceits? The former in his account of
the Spartan Polity has these words: 'Their voice you would no more
hear, than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as
if they were cast in bronze. You would deem them more modest than
the very maidens in their eyes.' To speak of the pupils of the
eyes as modest maidens was a piece of absurdity becoming
Amphicrates rather than Xenophon; and then what a strange notion
to suppose that modesty is always without exception, expressed in
the eye!"--H. L. Howell, "Longinus," p. 8. See "Spectator," No.
354.
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: something a thousand miles away. For she spoke of the wedding, and of the
fact that it would certainly be a small one. She went over the names of
the people who would have to be invited, and doubted if she were one of
these. But if she should be, then she would go--for the sake of Miss
Josephine St. Michael, she declared. In short, it was perfectly plain
that Juno was much afraid of being left out, and that wild horses could
not drag her away from it, if an invitation came to her. But, as I say,
this side of the wedding seemed to have nothing to do with it, when I
thought of all that lay beneath; my one interest to-day was to see John
Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or
intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do. Therefore, disappointment
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