| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: didn't speak a word to each other, but once or twice I saw her
turn and look up at him as if she was puzzled.
I closed the door and stood just inside, looking at father's
picture over the mantel. As sure as I stood there, the eyes were
fixed on the spring, and I sensed, as you may say, what they
meant. I went over and looked down into the spring, and it
seemed to me it was darker than usual. It may have smelled
stronger, but the edge had been taken off my nose, so to speak,
by being there so long.
From the spring I looked again at father, and his eyes were on me
mournful and sad. I felt as though, if he'd been there, father
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: off in front; and whenever it went on again (which it generally
did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on
pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling
off sideways; and as he generally did this on the side on which
Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not
to walk QUITE close to the horse.
`I'm afraid you've not had much practice in riding,' she
ventured to say, as she was helping him up from his fifth tumble.
The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at
the remark. `What makes you say that?' he asked, as he scrambled
back into the saddle, keeping hold of Alice's hair with one hand,
Through the Looking-Glass |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: thought she would go up to the cemetery: `I got some children up
there,' she explained, `and same time I get some air. No, I don't go
nowheres, just to the mill and then home.'''
Here again, as in all reports on women in industry, we find the
prevalence of pregnant women working on night-shifts, often to the
very day of their delivery. ``Oh, yes, plenty women, big bellies,
work in the night time,'' one of the toiling mothers volunteered.
``Shame they go, but what can do?'' The abuse was general. Many
mothers confessed that owing to poverty they themselves worked up to
the last week or even day before the birth of their children. Births
were even reported in one of the mills during the night shift. A
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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 Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: the open fields. The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have
grown yet stronger. The road was completely covered with
drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not
lost their way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not
easy to see, since the wind blew in their faces.
Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and
looked out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse's
sagacity, letting it take its own way. And the horse really
did not lose the road but followed its windings, turning now to
the right and now to the left and sensing it under his feet, so
that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened
Master and Man |
