| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though
perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has
been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and
practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which
it sheds on the science of legislation.
The authority of government, even such as I am willing
to submit to--for I will cheerfully obey those who know and
can do better than I, and in many things even those who
neither know nor can do so well--is still an impure one: to
be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of
the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
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 Heart of the West by O. Henry: degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."
"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you
say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a
Ruby's poetry!"
"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the
inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of
ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found.
In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics
more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old.
At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three
thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth,
Heart of the West |
