| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, so
much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the eternal
womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the race should
labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or toilers for the
children he brings into the world, provided the reward they receive is not
large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any time desire to enter.
When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed a
steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across
sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they were
come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, green
lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of trees
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: delight of a girl. She stood up in the high wagon to see
everything, and when she sat down again she took fast hold of my
hand.
"Hadn't you better urge the horse a little, Almiry?" she
asked. "He's had it easy as we came along, and he can rest when we
get there. The others are some little ways ahead, and I don't want
to lose a minute."
We watched the boats drop their sails one by one in the cove
as we drove along the high land. The old Bowden house stood, low-
storied and broad-roofed, in its green fields as if it were a
motherly brown hen waiting for the flock that came straying toward
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: restored to his throne. But to our disappointment the framers of
the Protocol contented themselves with the clause that: "Rational
intercourse shall be permitted with the Emperor as in Western
countries," and with the return of the court in 1902 he was still
a prisoner.
Every one who has written about audiences with the Empress
Dowager tells how "the Emperor was seated near, though a little
below her," but they never tell why. The reason is not far to
seek. The world must not know that he was a prisoner in the
palace. They must see him near the throne, but they may not speak
to him. The addresses of the ministers were passed to her by her
|
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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: fallen into the water satisfied the boatman, and Barbara returned home
dripping and baffled. But little Sarah did not recover from the shock,
and after a few weeks her short life ended, and she was laid in the
Cemetery.
Yet another time, goaded to desperation, she tried to take her life
by hanging herself, but a neighbour came in and cut her down
unconscious, but still living. She became a terror to all the
neighbourhood, and her name was the bye-word for daring and desperate
actions. But our Open-Air Meetings attracted her, she came to the
Barracks, got saved, and was delivered from her love of drink and sin.
From being a dread her home became a sort of house of refuge in the
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
