| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes in the back
slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper and cultured
classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are contracted always
tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence of individuals
rises, but also because of the regulation of the number of births after
marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult years among the more
intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds those of the lowest, owing
to the high rate of infant mortality where births are excessive.)
Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on the
entire field of woman's ancient and traditional labours, we find that fully
three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the remaining
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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 Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: old Cap'n himself was no coward. Indeed, in owning to his alarm
he had really done a brave thing, since few have the moral
courage to proclaim themselves afraid. But Cleggett was a man of
iron. Although the tempest smote the hulk with blow after blow,
although both earth and water seemed to lie prostrate and
trampled beneath its unappeasable fury, Cleggett had no thought
of yielding.
Unconsciously he drew himself up. It seemed to his crew that he
actually gained in girth and height. The soul, in certain great
moments, seems to have power to expand the body and inform it
with the quality of immortality; Ajax, in his magnificent gesture
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