| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: little tiny hand. And it was easy to see that, in Bessie Bell's
mind, though Only-Just-Ladies were kind and sweet, Mamas were far
greater and more important beings.
One night, when Sister Helen Vincula had put Bessie Bell to bed in
the small bed that was not a crib-bed, though like that she had
slept in before she had come to the high mountain, Bessie Bell still
lay wide awake.
Her blue eyes were wide open and both of her pink little hands were
above her head on the pillow. She was thinking, and thinking, and
she forgot that she was thinking her thinking aloud, and she said:
``Alice has a mama. Robbie has a mama. Katie has a mama. Where is
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: man, and not mine."
So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom's surprise, he and Grimes
chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know
that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a
keeper turned inside out.
They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between
their stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer,
which stood up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous
trees, and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on
their heads. But he was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring
noise, which followed them all the way. So much puzzled, that at
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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 Anabasis by Xenophon: Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a
pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
Anabasis |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly "I beat you because I
like beating you; and I shall do it whenever I can contrive an excuse
for it." But to represent this detestable lust to the child as Divine
wrath, and the cruelty as the beneficent act of God, which is exactly
what all our floggers do, is to add to the torture of the body, out of
which the flogger at least gets some pleasure, the maiming and
blinding of the child's soul, which can bring nothing but horror to
anyone.
The Manufacture of Monsters
This industry is by no means peculiar to China. The Chinese (they
say) make physical monsters. We revile them for it and proceed to
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