| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as,
indeed, there was cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had
tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and then
exposed and insulted him. Was it wise to place myself any longer
at his mercy? With his help I should doubtless travel more
quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was
everything to show that it would be at a greater risk. In short, I
should have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the
temptation of the French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and
for whose society I felt so great and natural an impatience. If I
was to see anything of my countrymen, it was clear I had first of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: The mayor assumed a stern, disapproving air, and his clerk looked up
at the couple with malicious curiosity. No marriage was ever so little
festal. Like other human beings when deprived of their accessories, it
became a simple act in itself, great only in thought.
After a few questions, to which the bride and bridegroom responded,
and a few words mumbled by the mayor, and after signing the registers,
with their witnesses, duly, Luigi and Ginevra were made one. Then the
wedded pair walked back through two lines of joyous relations who did
not belong to them, and whose only interest in their marriage was the
delay caused to their own wedding by this gloomy bridal. When, at
last, Ginevra found herself in the mayor's court-yard, under the open
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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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: dealing with the most urgently pressing aspect of the question, which I
hope may be put into operation at once.
In taking this course I am aware that I cut myself off from a wide and
attractive field; but as a practical man, dealing with sternly prosaic
facts, I must confine my attention to that particular section of the
problem which clamours most pressingly for a solution. Only one thing
I may say in passing. Then is nothing in my scheme which will bring it
into collision either with Socialists of the State, or Socialists of
the Municipality, with Individualists or Nationalists, or any of the
various schools of though in the great field of social economics--
excepting only those anti-christian economists who hold that it is an
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: And they do, too. We were discussing it the
other evening -- our Little Group of Serious Think-
ers, you know -- and we decided that what philan-
thropy owes to science is made up by what science
owes to philanthropy.
Isn't it wonderful how things balance like that?
There's the Twilight Sleep and the Mother-
Teacher Idea, for instance.
Our little group are thinking of starting a propo-
ganda to urge ALL Teachers to be Mothers.
And, of course, a lot of them might object -- but
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