| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: listened attentively, until I felt, without at first seeing the cause,
that dulling of enjoyment, that interference with the receptive
attention, which comes at times to one during the performance of music
when untimely people come in or go out. Next, I knew that our group of
listeners was less compact; and then, as we moved from the first point in
the church to a new one, I saw that Bohm and Charley were dropping
behind, and I lingered, with the intention of bringing them closer.
"But there was nothing in it," I heard Charley's slow monologue
continuing behind me to the silent Bohm. "We could have bought the
Parsons road at that time. 'Gentlemen,' I said to them, 'what is there
for us in tide-water at Kings Port? '"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: will think, is the sight of those puny parasites which, as it were,
connect the ages and the aeons: yet not so solemn and full of
meaning as that tiny relic of an older world, the little pear-
shaped Turbinolia (cousin of the Madrepores and Sea-anemones),
found fossil in the Suffolk Crag, and yet still lingering here and
there alive in the deep water of Scilly and the west coast of
Ireland, possessor of a pedigree which dates, perhaps, from ages
before the day in which it was said, "Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness." To think that the whole human race, its joys
and its sorrows, its virtues and its sins, its aspirations and its
failures, has been rushing out of eternity and into eternity again,
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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 Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Ozma of Oz had sent the Clockwork Man to assist
him, and how they had fallen in with Queen Ann and
her people from Oogaboo. Also he told how Betsy
and Hank and Polychrome and the Rose Princess had
happened to join their party.
"And you intended to conquer Ruggedo, the Metal
Monarch and King of the Nomes?" asked the Citizen.
"Yes. That seemed the on-ly thing for us to do,"
was Tik-Tok's reply. "But he was too cle-ver for
us. When we got close to his cav-ern he made our
path lead to the Tube, and made the op-en-ing in-
Tik-Tok of 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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: She was therefore nineteen years older than Henri II. These dates,
taken from her epitaph which was copied from her tomb by the historian
who concerned himself so much about her at the close of the last
century, clear up quite a number of historical difficulties. Some
historians have declared she was forty, others that she was sixteen at
the time of her father's condemnation in 1523; in point of fact she
was then twenty-four. After reading everything for and against her
conduct towards Francois I. we are unable to affirm or to deny
anything. This is one of the passages of history that will ever remain
obscure. We may see by what happens in our own day how history is
falsified at the very moment when events happen.
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