The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: selling their crops at steadily falling prices. This drove some
of them frantic. They couldn't pay interest on their mortgaged
farms, and they were seeking to find "the way out" by issuing
paper money, or money from some cheap metal with which they could
repudiate their debts. Banks could not collect their loans,
merchants could not get money for their goods, manufacturers were
swamped by their pay-rolls and had to discharge their men. Coxey
was raising a great army of idle men to march on Washington and
demand that the government should feed and clothe the people.
All my savings had long since gone, and from the high life in
the Pie Boarding-House I had descended to my days of bread and
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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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: last farewell in the peach orchard. I do not know. But I do know that
if anyone had lifted a sjambock on me I should have answered with a
bullet. Then there would have been blood between us, which is worse to
cross than whole rivers of wrath and jealousy. So I just watched the
wagons until they vanished, and galloped home down the rock-strewn
slope, wishing that the horse would stumble and break my neck.
When I reached the station, however, I was glad that it had not done so,
as I found my father sitting on the stoep reading a letter that had been
brought by a mounted Hottentot.
It was from Henri Marais, and ran thus:--
"'REVEREND HEER AND FRIEND QUATERMAIN,--I send this to bid you farewell,
Marie |