| 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: worker invite the manual worker to a confab and then serve the
feast in such long-necked language that the laborer can't get it?
"Let's spill the beans," the agitator tells him, "then we'll all
get some of the gravy."
This long-necked jargon must go. It is not the people's dish.
With foggy phrases that no one really understands they are trying
to incite the hand worker to bite off the head of the brain
worker. When employer and employee sit together at the council
table, let the facts be served in such simple words that we can
all get our teeth into them.
When I became secretary of labor I said that the employer and
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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 Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: ONE.
What then?
TWO.
What then, quoth you? why, ist not time to fly,
When envy and destruction is so nigh?
ONE.
Content thee, man; they are far enough from hence,
And will be met, I warrant ye, to their cost,
Before they break so far into the Realm.
TWO.
Aye, so the Grasshopper doth spend the time
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: of Sutherland came. There we found her little rooms full of
agreeable people. . . . The next day, Thursday, there was a grand
opera for the benefit of the Irish, and all the Diplomatic Corps
were obliged to take boxes. Lady Palmerston, who was one of the
three patronesses, secured a very good box for us, directly opposite
the Queen, and only three from the stage.
We took with us Mrs. Milman and W.T. Davis, to whom it gave a grand
opportunity of seeing the Queen and the assembled aristocracy, at
least all who are now in London. "God save the Queen," sung with
the whole audience standing, was a noble sight. The Queen also
stood, and at the end gave three curtsies. On Friday Captain and
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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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: depressed by the sense of his youth and his infirmities, he
offered marriage and was received with laughter. Not a year
had passed, before his master, conscious of growing infirmities,
took him for a partner; he proposed again; he was accepted; led
two years of troubled married life; and awoke one morning to
find his wife had run away with a dashing drummer, and had
left him heavily in debt. The debt, and not the drummer, was
supposed to be the cause of the hegira; she had concealed her
liabilities, they were on the point of bursting forth, she was
weary of Bellairs; and she took the drummer as she might have
taken a cab. The blow disabled her husband, his partner was
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