| 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: he?"
No one answered.
"If this strike was called by outsiders," I cried, "why don't
the outsiders do the striking? Whose jobs will be lost in this
strike--our jobs or the outsiders' jobs? If the man who started
this strike has a job that won't be lost in the strike, then I
claim that we have made a bad mistake. And if we're making a
mistake, men, what are we going to do about it?"
I sat down, exhausted by the first attempt at public pleading I
had ever made. Everything grew dark about me, and I knew that I
had done my best and that I was through. I was quite young, and I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: "though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and
here I should miss the very chance to resist. Your garden could never be
Eden for me, because temptation is absent from it."
"Absent!" Still lighter, still deeper, was this whisper that the Padre
breathed.
"I must find life," exclaimed Gaston, "and my fortune at the mines, I
hope. I am not a bad fellow, Father. You can easily guess all the things
I do. I have never, to my knowledge, harmed any one. I didn't even try to
kill my adversary in an affair of honor. I gave him a mere flesh-wound,
and by this time he must be quite recovered. He was my friend. But as he
came between me--"
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: occasioned by an increase of trade and population, would create confusion.
Colony would be against colony. Each being able might scorn each other's
assistance: and while the proud and foolish gloried in their little
distinctions, the wise would lament, that the union had not been formed before.
Wherefore, the PRESENT TIME is the TRUE TIME for establishing it.
The intimacy which is contracted in infancy, and the friendship which
is formed in misfortune, are, of all others, the most lasting and unalterable.
Our present union is marked with both these characters: we are young
and we have been distressed; but our concord hath withstood our troubles,
and fixes a memorable are for posterity to glory in.
The present time, likewise, is that peculiar time, which never happens
Common Sense |
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 Poems by Bronte Sisters: And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That, when December blights thy brow,
He still may leave thy garland green.
THE ELDER'S REBUKE.
"Listen! When your hair, like mine,
Takes a tint of silver gray;
When your eyes, with dimmer shine,
Watch life's bubbles float away:
When you, young man, have borne like me
The weary weight of sixty-three,
Then shall penance sore be paid
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