| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: about Ozma and Dorothy until one morning, while she sat
with her maids, there came a sudden clang of the
great alarm bell. This was so unusual that every maid
gave a start and even the Sorceress for a moment could
not think what the alarm meant.
Then she remembered the ring she had given Dorothy
when she left the palace to start on her venture. In
giving the ring Glinda had warned the little girl not
to use its magic powers unless she and Ozma were in
real danger, but then she was to turn it on her finger
once to the right and once to the left and Glinda's
Glinda of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: instinctively whether they are loved or only tolerated. Pure and
innocent hearts are more distressed by shades of difference than by
contrasts; a child does not understand evil, but it knows when the
instinct of the good and the beautiful which nature has implanted in
it is shocked. The lectures which Pierrette now drew upon herself on
propriety of behavior, modesty, and economy were merely the corollary
of the one theme, "Pierrette will ruin us."
These perpetual fault-findings, which were destined to have a fatal
result for the poor child, brought the two celibates back to the old
beaten track of their shop-keeping habits, from which their removal to
Provins had parted them, and in which their natures were now to expand
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