| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: and forty-six simply awful; they are disreputably disgraceful. I
have had to remove a mother in labor from one part of the shack
to another to keep dry.
And here is the testimony of the Rev. Eugene S. Gaddis, former
superintendent of the Sociological Department of the Colorado
Fuel and Iron Company:
The C. F. & I. Company now own and rent hovels, shacks and
dug-outs that are unfit for the habitation of human beings and
are little removed from the pig-sty make of dwellings. And the
people in them live on the very level of a pig-sty. Frequently
the population is so congested that whole families are crowded
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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 Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: which is fine grazing land where run our great herds of thoats
and zitidars.
"Surrounded as we are by predatory enemies our herdsmen must
indeed be warriors or we should have no herds, and you may be
assured they get plenty of fighting. Then there is our constant
need of workers in the mines. The Gatholians consider themselves
a race of warriors and as such prefer not to labor in the mines.
The law is, however, that each male Gatholian shall give an hour
a day in labor to the government. That is practically the only
tax that is levied upon them. They prefer however, to furnish a
substitute to perform this labor, and as our own people will not
The Chessmen of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: gradually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser
attributes of body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century
or two more of such refinement as well as most other men.
The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and
his ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the
resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate.
In old Colonel Pyncheon's funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely
canonized his deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista
through the roof of the church, and thence through the firmament
above, showed him seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers
of the spiritual world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly
House of Seven Gables |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a
sect immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself
his ugly office ere the bones are cold; unusual, and of a taste
which I shall leave my readers free to qualify; unusual, and to me
inspiring. If I have at all learned the trade of using words to
convey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last furnished me
with a subject. For it is in the interest of all mankind, and the
cause of public decency in every quarter of the world, not only
that Damien should be righted, but that you and your letter should
be displayed at length, in their true colours, to the public eye.
To do this properly, I must begin by quoting you at large: I shall
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