| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: First walked a gingerbread man neatly formed and baked to a lovely
brown tint. He wore a silk hat and carried a candy cane prettily
striped with red and yellow. His shirt-front and cuffs were white
frosting, and the buttons on his coat were licorice drops.
Behind the gingerbread man came a child with flaxen hair and merry
blue eyes, dressed in white pajamas, with sandals on the soles of its
pretty bare feet. The child looked around smiling and thrust its
hands into the pockets of the pajamas. Close after it came a big
rubber bear, walking erect on its hind feet. The bear had twinkling
black eyes, and its body looked as if it had been pumped full of air.
Following these curious visitors were two tall, thin men and two
 The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: "I am not going to Khiva, but to the Caucasus. I have the spleen;
and at the pace at which I mean to go I shall be either Prince Paz
in three years, or dead. Good-by; though I have taken sixty-
thousand francs from Nucingen, our accounts are even.
"Thaddeus."
"Idiot that I was," thought Adam; "I came near to cutting my throat
just now, talking about Malaga."
It is now three years since Paz went away. The newspapers have as yet
said nothing about any Prince Paz. The Comtesse Laginska is immensely
interested in the expeditions of the Emperor Nicholas; she is Russian
to the core, and reads with a sort of avidity all the news that comes
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