| 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: me this dreadful head," said the shaggy man, sorrowfully.
"I wish you wouldn't say 'hee-haw' so much," Polychrome begged him;
"it makes cold chills run down my back."
"But I can't help it, my dear; my donkey head wants to bray
continually," he replied. "Doesn't your fox head want to yelp every
minute?" he asked Button-Bright.
"Don't know," said the boy, still staring at the shaggy man's ears.
These seemed to interest him greatly, and the sight also made him
forget his own fox head, which was a comfort.
"What do you think, Polly? Shall I promise the donkey king an
invitation to Ozma's party?" asked Dorothy of the Rainbow's Daughter,
The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: "Il." xxiv. 61; Hes. "Theog." 1006, and "Epithal." (ap. Tsetz,
"Prol. ad Lycophr.):
{tris makar Aiakide kai tetrakis olbie Peleu
os toisd' en megarois ieron lekhos eisanabaineis}.
The mighty Telamon[16] won from the greatest of all states and wedded
her whom he desired, Periboea the daughter of Alcathus;[17] and when
the first of Hellenes,[18] Heracles[19] the son of Zeus, distributed
rewards of valour after taking Troy, to Telamon he gave Hesione.[20]
[16] See "Il." viii. 283l Paus. i. 42. 1-4.
[17] Or Alcathous, who rebuilt the walls of Megara by Apollo's aid.
Ov. "Met." viii. 15 foll.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: at first. No: another voice shouted occasional replies ; and this
interlocutor seemed to be on the other side of the hedge. The
voice, though soft in quality, was not Stephen's.
The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of
an old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate
attached, had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton,
whom Elfride had never seen. Her father might have struck up an
acquaintanceship with some member of that family through the
privet-hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might have
wandered thither.
Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains
out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds that ran
after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged
than those of Dr Brooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr Berwick, or any,
though the most famous men of the time. I And I was told that some
of them got five pounds a day by their physic.
But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may
serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people at
that time: and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than
any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their
pockets and get their money, in which their wickedness, whatever it
A Journal of the Plague Year |
