| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: silent place.
Some of the wooden beings fell flat upon the ground, where they
quivered and trembled in every limb; but most of them managed to wheel
and escape again to a distance.
Zeb ran and picked up one of the Gargoyles that lay nearest to him.
The top of its head was carved into a crown and the Wizard's bullet
had struck it exactly in the left eye, which was a hard wooden knot.
Half of the bullet stuck in the wood and half stuck out, so it had
been the jar and the sudden noise that had knocked the creature down,
more than the fact that it was really hurt. Before this crowned
Gargoyle had recovered himself Zeb had wound a strap several times
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: mug--all which articles, uniting as they rolled out, stood up
energetically on the floor in the shape of a little golden dwarf
about a foot and a half high.
"That's right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his
legs and then his arms, and then shaking his head up and down and
as far round as it would go, for five minutes without stopping,
apparently with the view of ascertaining if he were quite correctly
put together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless
amazement. He was dressed in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so
fine in its texture that the prismatic colors gleamed over it as if
on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over this brilliant doublet his
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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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: shop, it seems," she said sharply.
"I am afraid so," said the lady innocently.
"How if it is a spy? . . . a plot? . . . Don't go. And take the box
away from her----"
The words whispered in the pastry-cook's ear cooled his hot fit of
courage down to zero.
"Oh! I will just go out and say a word or two. I will rid you of him
soon enough," he exclaimed, as he bounced out of the shop.
The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down
on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A
countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: to remount the hill; and just as I, mounting along with it, had got
back again, from the head downwards, into the thin golden sunshine, I
saw in front of me a donkey tied to a tree. Now, I have a certain
liking for donkeys, principally, I believe, because of the delightful
things that Sterne has written of them. But this was not after the
pattern of the ass at Lyons. He was of a white colour, that seemed
to fit him rather for rare festal occasions than for constant
drudgery. Besides, he was very small, and of the daintiest portions
you can imagine in a donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to
look at him to see he had never worked. There was something too
roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy
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