| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: them. When the last jumped over: "Have you been to sleep today?" he said;
"there is one missing."
Then little Jannita knew what was coming, and she said, in a low voice,
"No." And then she felt in her heart that deadly sickness that you feel
when you tell a lie; and again she said, "Yes."
"Do you think you will have any supper this evening?" said the Boer.
"No," said Jannita.
"What do you think you will have?"
"I don't know," said Jannita.
"Give me your whip," said the Boer to Dirk, the Hottentot.
...
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: [35] Or, "But to pass on, he was already, may be, eighty years of age,
when it came under his observation. . . ."
[36] This same Tachos.
[37] See "Hell." VII. i. 36; iv. 9.
[38] I.e. "the army under Nectanebos." See Diod. xv. 92; Plut. "Ages."
xxxvii. (Clough, iv. 44 foll.)
[39] I.e. "Nectanebos and a certain Mendesian."
III
Such, then, is the chronicle of this man's achievements, or of such of
them as were wrought in the presence of a thousand witnesses. Being of
this sort they have no need of further testimony; the mere recital of
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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 Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: The sea-pull drew them side by side, gunnel to gunnel laid,
And they felt the sheerstrakes pound and clear, but never a word was said.
Then Reuben Paine cried out again before his spirit passed:
"Have I followed the sea for thirty years to die in the dark at last?
Curse on her work that has nipped me here with a shifty trick unkind --
I have gotten my death where I got my bread, but I dare not face it blind.
Curse on the fog! Is there never a wind of all the winds I knew
To clear the smother from off my chest, and let me look at the blue?"
The good fog heard -- like a splitten sail, to left and right she tore,
And they saw the sun-dogs in the haze and the seal upon the shore.
 Verses 1889-1896 |
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 Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: returned with a long, sharp thorn. He glanced at the
King, who nodded his head in assent, and then he rushed
forward and stuck the thorn into the leg of the
Scarecrow. The Scarecrow merely smiled and said
nothing, for the thorn didn't hurt him at all.
Then the Loon tried to prick the Tin Woodman's leg,
but the tin only blunted the point of the thorn.
"Just as I thought," said Til, blinking her purple
eyes and shaking her puffy head; but just then the Loon
stuck the thorn into the leg of Woot the Wanderer, and
while it had been blunted somewhat, it was still sharp
 The Tin Woodman of Oz |