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: brings man most of his blessings. A school from which no man
could come out ignorant. That school should teach the eternal
facts, and he that denied the facts would then be known for a
fool or a rogue--and not be thought a Messiah.
I love sentiment, and I believe in God. And I believe that
facts are God's glorious handiwork. "Ye shall know the truth, and
the truth will set you free." The man who shuns realities because
they belittle him is on the wrong road; he is hopelessly lost
from the beginning.
CHAPTER XXX VIII
THE EDITOR GETS MY GOAT
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: betokened reprimand at once. "My dear nephew Augustus," she began, in her
fine, elegant handwriting. That was always her mode of address to me when
something was coming, while at other times it would be, less
portentously, "My dear Augustus," or "My dear nephew "; but whenever my
name and my relationship to her occurred conjointly, I took the
communication away with me to some corner, and opened it in solitude.
It wasn't about the Bombos, though; and for what she took me to task I
was able to defend myself, I think, quite adequately. She found fault
with me for liking the South too much, and this she based upon the
enthusiastic accounts of Kings Port and its people that I had written to
her; nor had she at all approved of my remarks on the subject of the
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