| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon
the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the
bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the
tactics that such conditions dictate.
The recent populist uprising; the more recent "Debs Movement"; the
thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the
capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that
characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these,
together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing into
notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the
Labor Movement in the nation a critical one. The best information
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: otherwise but as an extremely youthful creature. At the same time,
apart from her exalted position, she exercised over him the
supremacy a woman's earlier maturity gives her over a young man of
her own age. As a matter of fact we can see that, without ever
having more than a half an hour's consecutive conversation together,
and the distances duly preserved, these two were becoming friends--
under the eye of the old man, I suppose.
How he first got in touch with his captain's wife Powell relates in
this way. It was long before his memorable conversation with the
mate and shortly after getting clear of the channel. It was gloomy
weather; dead head wind, blowing quite half a gale; the Ferndale
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