| 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: Jawbone Janes to travel half across the continent to harangue a
poor bunch of striking hunyaks. These daughters of luxury wanted
one luxury that money could not buy. The luxury of chinning their
drivel to an audience. You can't buy audiences as you buy orchids
and furs. Accidents make audiences. When a horse falls down and a
crowd gathers, he'll be up again and the crowd gone before a girl
from Riverside Drive can come a hundred miles in a Pullman. But
when the job falls down, the strike crowd sticks together for
days. This gives the crack-brained lady opportunity to catch the
Transcontinental limited and get there in time to pound their
ears with her oratory. She prefers a foreign crowd that can not
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: bringing up his supports; when the cavalry of the Olynthians (who now
contributed a contingent in accordance with their oaths)[29] wheeled
round on them, caught the pursuers in the heat of their pursuit, and
drove them uphill, putting large numbers of them to the sword--so
quickly are infantry overhauled by cavalry on steep ground which can
be ridden over. Being arrived within the walls of Thespiae, Agesilaus
found the citizens in a state of party feud, the men of Lacedaemonian
proclivities desiring to put their political opponents, one of whom
was Menon, to death[30]--a proceeding which Agesilaus would not
sanction. After having healed their differences and bound them over by
solemn oath to keep the peace with one another, he at once retired,
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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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is
bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble
youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in
spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven and its
Powers, by pretending belief in a revelation which asserts the love
of money to be the root of ALL evil, and declaring, at the same
time, that it is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief
national deeds and measures, by no other love. {12}
My friends, I do not know why any of us should talk about reading.
We want some sharper discipline than that of reading; but, at all
events, be assured, we cannot read. No reading is possible for a
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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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: vulgar thing which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came to the white lap of
the great sea-mother, ten thousand fathoms deep; where she makes
world-pap all day long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the
fire-giants to bake, till it has risen and hardened into mountain-
loaves and island-cakes.
And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap, and
turned into a fossil water-baby; which would have astonished the
Geological Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of
years hence.
For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight, on the
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