| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and that, in some
other man's house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife he keeps for
his pleasures are visiting concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces
till far into the night bearing with aching back and tired head the
fretful, teething child he brought into the world, for a pittance of twenty
or thirty pounds a year, does not distress him. But that the same woman by
work in an office should earn one hundred and fifty pounds, be able to have
a comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure,
distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, so
much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the eternal
womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the race should
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: feed on our life's blood? How long must this terror of steam and
steel ride upon our necks? Will you never be satisfied, will you
never relent, you, our masters, you, our lords, you, our kings,
you, our task-masters, you, our Pharoahs. Will you never listen
to that command 'LET MY PEOPLE GO'? Oh, that cry ringing down
the ages. Hear it, hear it. It is the voice of the Lord God
speaking in his prophets. Hear it, hear it--'Let My people go!'
Rameses heard it in his pylons at Thebes, Caesar heard it on the
Palatine, the Bourbon Louis heard it at Versailles, Charles
Stuart heard it at Whitehall, the white Czar heard it in the
Kremlin,--'LET MY PEOPLE GO.' It is the cry of the nations, the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: interest in me?"
"Yes," said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made
him understand that they were being watched and overheard.
"What have you to say to me?" asked the Prince de Conde, in a low
voice.
"Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes
from the queen-mother," replied the fool, slipping his words into the
ear of the prince.
"Tell those who sent you," replied Conde, "that I should not have
entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to
fear."
|
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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled
to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other
departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect
following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that
it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases,
can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice.
At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy
of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people,
is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,
the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties
|
