| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: from office to salesroom, from salesroom to road, from road to
private office and recognized authority. Sophy had left her
early work far behind. She had her own desk now in the busy
workshop, and it was she who allotted the piece-work, marked it
in her much-thumbed ledger--that powerful ledger which, at the
week's end, decided just how plump or thin each pay-envelope
would be. So the shop and office at T. A. Buck's were bound
together by many ties of affection and sympathy and loyalty; and
these bonds were strongest where, at one end, they touched Emma
McChesney Buck, and, at the other, faithful Sophy Kumpf. Each a
triumphant example of Woman in Business.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: TEIRESIAS
Alas, alas, what misery to be wise
When wisdom profits nothing! This old lore
I had forgotten; else I were not here.
OEDIPUS
What ails thee? Why this melancholy mood?
TEIRESIAS
Let me go home; prevent me not; 'twere best
That thou shouldst bear thy burden and I mine.
OEDIPUS
For shame! no true-born Theban patriot
Oedipus Trilogy |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Perish'd youth: and his image, serene and sublime
In my heart rests unconscious of change and of time,
Could I see it but once more, as time and as change
Have made it, a thing unfamiliar and strange,
See, indeed, that the Being I loved in my youth
Is no more, and what rests now is only, in truth,
The hard pupil of life and the world: then, oh, then,
I should wake from a dream, and my life be again
Reconciled to the world; and, released from regret,
Take the lot fate accords to my choice.'
"So we met.
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and
Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is
that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new
method of doing good; though it has been indebted for educational
movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and
so forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom
they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every one of
them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of
their own denominations, and of baiting for the body in order to
catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be
seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories,
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