| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: "I don't like the coloring; it hurts my eyes."
"It shows how extremes meet," the young man rejoined.
"Instead of coming to the West we seem to have gone to the East.
The way the sky touches the house-tops is just like Cairo;
and the red and blue sign-boards patched over the face
of everything remind one of Mahometan decorations."
"The young women are not Mahometan," said his companion.
"They can't be said to hide their faces. I never saw
anything so bold."
"Thank Heaven they don't hide their faces!" cried Felix.
"Their faces are uncommonly pretty."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: lot by breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw
your weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it
out."
A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the
advice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the
snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his
mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred
yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main
street. It would have required an experienced man to keep the
top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man. As they swung
on the turn the sled went over, spilling half its load through the
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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 The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: everything about it was shaggy, although so new and beautiful, and he
sighed with contentment to realize that he could now be finely dressed
and still be the shaggy man. His coat was of rose-colored velvet,
trimmed with shags and bobtails, with buttons of blood-red rubies and
golden shags around the edges. His vest was a shaggy satin of a
delicate cream color, and his knee-breeches of rose velvet trimmed
like the coat. Shaggy creamy stockings of silk, and shaggy slippers of
rose leather with ruby buckles, completed his costume, and when he was
thus attired the shaggy man looked at himself in a long mirror with
great admiration. On a table he found a mother-of-pearl chest
decorated with delicate silver vines and flowers of clustered rubies,
The Road to Oz |
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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: by, a tree fell, blocking the road; and even before us leaves
were thickly strewn, and boughs had fallen, large enough to
make the passage difficult. But now we were hard by the
summit. The road crosses the ridge, just in the nick that
Kelmar showed me from below, and then, without pause, plunges
down a deep, thickly wooded glen on the farther side. At the
highest point a trail strikes up the main hill to the
leftward; and that leads to Silverado. A hundred yards
beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the Toll
House Hotel. We came up the one side, were caught upon the
summit by the whole weight of the wind as it poured over into
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