| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: other for a while, each being unable to realize what the singular thing
might be which it now beheld for the first time. Then Jim exclaimed:
"For goodness sake, what sort of a being are you?"
"I'm a Sawhorse," replied the other.
"Oh; I believe I've heard of you," said the cab-horse; "but you are
unlike anything that I expected to see."
"I do not doubt it," the Sawhorse observed, with a tone of pride. "I
am considered quite unusual."
"You are, indeed. But a rickety wooden thing like you has no right to
be alive."
"I couldn't help it," returned the other, rather crestfallen. "Ozma
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: embroiled my patience with it afresh; - and then to cure that, I
wrote a letter to Eliza. - Still it kept hold of me; and the
difficulty of understanding it increased but the desire.
I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle
of Burgundy; I at it again, - and, after two or three hours poring
upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon
did upon a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made sense of it;
but to make sure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it
into English, and see how it would look then; - so I went on
leisurely, as a trifling man does, sometimes writing a sentence, -
then taking a turn or two, - and then looking how the world went,
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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 Cratylus by Plato: HERMOGENES: The player of the lyre.
SOCRATES: And who will direct the shipwright?
HERMOGENES: The pilot.
SOCRATES: And who will be best able to direct the legislator in his work,
and will know whether the work is well done, in this or any other country?
Will not the user be the man?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And this is he who knows how to ask questions?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And how to answer them?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: story to it, just that you were so unloving and so careless as to have
lost your daughter."
"He that lives in a glass house should not be casting stones," says he;
"and we will finish inquiring into the behaviour of Miss Drummond
before we go on to sit in judgment on her father."
"But I will be entrapped into no such attitude," said I. "The
character of Miss Drummond is far above inquiry, as her father ought to
know. So is mine, and I am telling you that. There are but the two
ways of it open. The one is to express your thanks to me as one
gentleman to another, and to say no more. The other (if you are so
difficult as to be still dissatisfied) is to pay me, that which I have
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