| 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: strike at a time like that when the mills were on the verge of
closing because of bad business?
While the speakers were presenting the reasons for the strike I
noticed that not a man examined or discussed the dangers in it.
The mind of the meeting was made up. I was talking to the fellow
who sat beside me, and I told him what my father had written me.
"I agree," he said. "A strike at a time like this doesn't seem
to be the right thing to do."
"If you don't think it a wise move," I said, "why don't you get
up and say so. For this meeting is going to vote strike in the
next two minutes, sure as fate."
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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 Iliad by Homer: side hatching mischief for the Trojans. Minerva scowled at her
father, for she was in a furious passion with him, and said
nothing, but Juno could not contain herself. "Dread son of
Saturn," said she, "what, pray, is the meaning of all this? Is my
trouble, then, to go for nothing, and the sweat that I have
sweated, to say nothing of my horses, while getting the people
together against Priam and his children? Do as you will, but we
other gods shall not all of us approve your counsel."
Jove was angry and answered, "My dear, what harm have Priam and
his sons done you that you are so hotly bent on sacking the city
of Ilius? Will nothing do for you but you must within their walls
The Iliad |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: Houghton. He had had his faults and virtues, and good and bad
sides just like other boys of his age. He--oh, I am using too many
words, when one slang phrase will express it. Eddie had been just
a nice young kid. I think the worst thing he had ever said was
"Damn!" perhaps. If he had sworn, it was with clean oaths,
calculated to relieve the mind and feelings.
But the men that he shipped with during that year or more--I
am sure that he had never dreamed that such men were. He had never
stood on the curbing outside a recruiting office on South State
Street, in the old levee district, and watched that tragic panorama
move by--those nightmare faces, drink-marred, vice-scarred, ruined.
Buttered Side Down |
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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: off a romantic moonlight nor one's clams off a harrowing sunset.
Glory of sun and moon, let them be wrought for us by our landscape
artist and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to remind us of
the undying beauty of the sunsets that fade and die, but do not let
us eat our soup off them and send them down to the kitchen twice a
day to be washed and scrubbed by the handmaid.
All these things are simple enough, yet nearly always forgotten.
Your school of design here will teach your girls and your boys,
your handicraftsmen of the future (for all your schools of art
should be local schools, the schools of particular cities). We
talk of the Italian school of painting, but there is no Italian
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