| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: inability to read, to attend meetings, to have a taste of life? What
does she amount to? The proletariat needs fighters. Go on, females,
and breed like animals. Maybe of the thousands you bear a few will
become party members....''
The militant organization of the Marxian Socialists suggests that
their campaign must assume the tactics of militarism of the familiar
type. As represented by militaristic governments, militarism like
Socialism has always encouraged the proletariat to increase and
multiply. Imperial Germany was the outstanding and awful example of
this attitude. Before the war the fall in the birth-rate was viewed by
the Junker party with the gravest misgivings. Bernhardi and the
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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 Message by Honore de Balzac: things slip past unheeded--there you have the man!
But the Countess! Ah, how sharp and startling the contrast
between husband and wife! The Countess was a little woman, with a
flat, graceful figure and enchanting shape; so fragile, so dainty
was she, that you would have feared to break some bone if you so
much as touched her. She wore a white muslin dress, a rose-
colored sash, and rose-colored ribbons in the pretty cap on her
head; her chemisette was moulded so deliciously by her shoulders
and the loveliest rounded contours, that the sight of her
awakened an irresistible desire of possession in the depths of
the heart. Her eyes were bright and dark and expressive, her
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: for another was a mission . . . .
"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great
rock Capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and
hiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing
of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung
about in the puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst
the gray; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There,
you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its
countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a
thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-clad
terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave 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 Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: two until six. Each man was armed, and, as an additional
precaution, the one off duty slept in a room near the head of the
circular staircase and kept his door open, to be ready for
emergency.
These arrangements were carefully kept from the servants, who
were only commencing to sleep at night, and who retired, one and
all, with barred doors and lamps that burned full until morning.
The house was quiet again Wednesday night. It was almost a week
since Louise had encountered some one on the stairs, and it was
four days since the discovery of the hole in the trunk-room wall.
Arnold Armstrong and his father rested side by side in the
The Circular Staircase |
