| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: break before the toys and other presents were all distributed; so for
the first time in many years the reindeer trotted into the Laughing
Valley, on their return, in broad daylight, with the brilliant sun
peeping over the edge of the forest to prove they were far behind
their accustomed hours.
Having put the deer in the stable, the little folk began to wonder how
they might rescue their master; and they realized they must discover,
first of all, what had happened to him and where he was.
So Wisk the Fairy transported himself to the bower of the Fairy Queen,
which was located deep in the heart of the Forest of Burzee; and once
there, it did not take him long to find out all about the naughty
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: Two were from Selden's troop; five belonged to men who had ridden
with Sir Daniel to the field. Lastly, a little before dawn, a
spearman had come staggering to the moat side, pierced by three
arrows; even as they carried him in, his spirit had departed; but
by the words that he uttered in his agony, he must have been the
last survivor of a considerable company of men.
Hatch himself showed, under his sun-brown, the pallour of anxiety;
and when he had taken Dick aside and learned the fate of Selden, he
fell on a stone bench and fairly wept. The others, from where they
sat on stools or doorsteps in the sunny angle of the court, looked
at him with wonder and alarm, but none ventured to inquire 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 Chouans by Honore de Balzac: Malo."
Thereupon Galope-Chopine, who was tired out, went to bed for an hour
or two, at the end of which time he again departed. Later, on the
following morning, he returned, having carefully fulfilled all the
commissions entrusted to him by the Gars. Finding that Marche-a-Terre
and Pille-Miche had not appeared at the cottage, he relieved the
apprehensions of his wife, who went off, reassured, to the rocks of
Saint-Sulpice, where she had collected the night before several piles
of fagots, now covered with hoarfrost. The boy went with her, carrying
fire in a broken wooden shoe.
Hardly had his wife and son passed out of sight behind the shed when
The Chouans |
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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: to notice how the flames, burning off the backs of the books first,
had then run up behind the shelves, and so attacked the fore-edge
of the volumes standing upon them, leaving the majority with a
perfectly untouched oval centre of white paper and plain print,
while the whole surrounding parts were but a mass of black cinders.
The salvage was sold in one lot for a small sum, and the purchaser,
after a good deal of sorting and mending and binding placed about 1,000
volumes for sale at Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's in the following year.
So, too, when the curious old Library which was in a gallery
of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, was nearly destroyed
in the fire which devastated the Church in 1862, the books
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