| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: "Just as I thought, a Socialist dreamer and demagogue," pronounced
Powers scornfully.
"Merrill and Frome have been thinking of him just as you do."
James waved his hand toward the newspaper in front of the railroad
king. "With what result our election shows."
"Well, where does his power lie? How can you break it?" the old
man asked.
"He is a kind of brother to the lame and the halt all over the
state. Among the poor and the working classes he has friends
without number. They believe in him as a patriot fighting for them
against the foes of the country."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: source of safety or of danger to the People, and in these the People
prudently abstains from sharing; as, for instance, it does not think
it incumbent on itself to share in the functions of the general or of
the commander of cavalry.[10] The sovereign People recognises the fact
that in forgoing the personal exercise of these offices, and leaving
them to the control of the more powerful[11] citizens, it secures the
balance of advantage to itself. It is only those departments of
government which bring emolument[12] and assist the private estate
that the People cares to keep in its own hands.
[3] Cf. "Mem." I. ii. 58 foll.
[4] Lit. "ply the oar and propel the galleys."
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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 War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: took up their positions in the huge crescent about their
cylinders in absolute silence. It was a crescent with twelve
miles between its horns. Never since the devising of gun-
powder was the beginning of a battle so still. To us and to
an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the
same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary possession of
the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the
stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from
St. George's Hill and the woods of Painshill.
But facing that crescent everywhere--at Staines, Hounslow,
Ditton, Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the
War of the Worlds |
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 Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: oth-er plan," said Tiktok.
So Dorothy rewound his thought machinery, and while he was thinking
she decided to eat her dinner. Billina was already pecking away at
the cracks in the rocks, to find something to eat, so Dorothy sat down
and opened her tin dinner-pail.
In the cover she found a small tank that was full of very nice
lemonade. It was covered by a cup, which might also, when removed, be
used to drink the lemonade from. Within the pail were three slices of
turkey, two slices of cold tongue, some lobster salad, four slices of
bread and butter, a small custard pie, an orange and nine large
strawberries, and some nuts and raisins. Singularly enough, the nuts
Ozma of Oz |
