| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: arrested him. But when they asked him what he had been doing
previous to and immediately subsequent thereto, he hung his head
as if at a loss for an alibi.
I was city clerk at the time and had been a steel worker. I
knew why the man refused to answer. He didn't understand the
phraseology.
"Where were you previous to the eighth and immediately
subsequent thereto?" the attorney asked him for the third time.
All the prisoner could do was look guilty and say nothing.
"Answer the question," ordered the judge, "or I'll send you up
for vagrancy."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: "Besides," added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "it
would be of no use. I am not one of them."
"You do not mean"--said May, facing him.
"Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No
vital movement of the people's has worked down, for good or
evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.
Think back through history, and you will know it. What will
this lowest deep--thieves, Magdalens, negroes--do with the light
filtered through ponderous Church creeds, Baconian theories,
Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter need will be
thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their
Life in the Iron-Mills |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: the only port and place of business in the kingdom, collects and
administers its own revenue for its own behoof by the hands of
white councillors and under the supervision of white consuls. Let
him go further afield. He will find the roads almost everywhere to
cease or to be made impassable by native pig-fences, bridges to be
quite unknown, and houses of the whites to become at once a rare
exception. Set aside the German plantations, and the frontier is
sharp. At the boundary of the ELEELE SA, Europe ends, Samoa
begins. Here, then, is a singular state of affairs: all the
money, luxury, and business of the kingdom centred in one place;
that place excepted from the native government and administered by
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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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: study of vice, as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their
hopes by the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its
results, not its action; they simply considered those who died for
glory fools. Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural
proclivities would have seated them at the green table of a congress.
Nature had poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard
into that of a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous,
feverish, half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good
or evil, and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these
singular temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a
base one. The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the
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