| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: for them? You will find my father extremely difficult, but
some of our younger men would love it.
"And," she went on; "there are American women who'd love it
too. We're petted. We're kept out of things. We aren't
placed. We don't get enough to do. We're spenders and wasters
--not always from choice. While these fathers and brothers
and husbands of ours play about with the fuel and power and
life and hope of the world as though it was a game of poker.
With all the empty unspeakable solemnity of the male. And
treat us as though we ought to be satisfied if they bring
home part of the winnings.
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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 Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: of indefinite dream-evoking sentences, which every one is free to
interpret according to his own desires, hatreds, and hopes. In
matters of faith the real sense of words matters very little; it
is the meaning attached to them that makes their importance.
Of the three principles of the revolutionary device, equality was
most fruitful of consequences. We shall see in another part of
this book that it is almost the only one which still
survives, and is still productive of effects.
It was certainly not the Revolution that introduced the idea of
equality into the world. Without going back even to the Greek
republics, we may remark that the theory of equality was taught
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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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: time you've washed your brushes, mended your skirt-braid, darned
your stockings and gloves, looked for gray hairs and crows'-feet,
and skimmed the magazine section, it's Monday."
It was small wonder that Emma McChesney's leisure had been
limited. In those busy years she had not only earned the living
for herself and her boy; she had trained that boy into manhood
and placed his foot on the first rung of business success. She
had transformed the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company from
a placidly mediocre concern to a thriving, flourishing,
nationally known institution. All this might have turned another
woman's head. It only served to set Emma McChesney's more
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: and took up so much of his time and thoughts, that he himself had not
leisure to take the sweet content that I, who pretended no title to them,
took in his fields: for I could there sit quietly; and looking on the water,
see some fishes sport themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at
flies of several shapes and colours; looking on the hills, I could behold
them spotted with woods and groves; looking down the meadows,
could see, here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl
cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this
present month of May: these, and many other field flowers, so
perfumed the air, that I thought that very meadow like that field in
Sicily of which Diodorus speaks, where the perfumes arising from the
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