| 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: mental pain that other men have sought in alcohol, I always found
in song.
CHAPTER V
THE LOST FEATHER BED
I didn't care very much for day school. The whipping that I got
there rather dulled the flavor of it for me. But I was a prize
pupil at Sunday-school. Father had gone to America and had saved
enough money to send for the family. I asked my mother if there
were Sunday-schools in America, but she did not know. In those
days we knew little about lands that lay so far away.
My boy chums told me we were going to Pennsylvania to fight
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: menageries of human reason. . . .
We have already a child, and Margaret was childless, and I find
myself prone to insist upon that, as if it was a justification.
But, indeed, when we became lovers there was small thought of
Eugenics between us. Ours was a mutual and not a philoprogenitive
passion. Old Nature behind us may have had such purposes with us,
but it is not for us to annex her intentions by a moralising
afterthought. There isn't, in fact, any decent justification for us
whatever--at that the story must stand.
But if there is no justification there is at least a very effective
excuse in the mental confusedness of our time. The evasion of that
|
