| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: a master."
Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were
suspiciously watched by the police, and after a time he and three of
his friends were arrested. The whole story may be found in the
newspapers of that day.
Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: quarter of our army of child labor--work in local industries, stores,
and farms, homework in dark and unsanitary tenements is still
permitted. Children work in ``homes'' on artificial flowers,
finishing shoddy garments, sewing their very life's blood and that of
the race into tawdry clothes and gewgaws that are the most
unanswerable comments upon our vaunted ``civilization.'' And to-day,
we must not forget, the child-laborer of yesterday is becoming the
father or the mother of the child laborer of to-morrow.
``Any nation that works its women is damned,'' once wrote Woods
Hutchinson. The nation that works its children, one is tempted to
add, is committing suicide. Loud-mouthed defenders of American
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: up of such a kind, that policy is not only silly, it is pernicious. It is
pernicious because the world is heaving with frightful menaces to all the
good that man knows. They would strip life of every resource gathered
through centuries of struggle. Mad mobs, whole races of people who have
never thought at all, or who have now hurled away all pretense of
thought, aim at mere destruction of everything that is. They don't
attempt to offer any substitute. Down with religion, down with education,
down with marriage, down with law, down with property: Such is their cry.
Wipe the slate blank, they say, and then we'll see what we'll write on
it. Amid this stands Germany with her unchanged purpose to own the earth;
and Japan is doing some thinking. Amid this also is the Anglo-Saxon race,
|
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 Mayflower Compact: file
containing them all, in order to improve the content ratios of
Etext
to header material.
***
#STARTMARK#
The Mayflower Compact
November 11, 1620 [This was November 21, old style calendar]
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten,
the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James,
by the Grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland,
|
