| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: you?' (Plainly the old man found it not so easy to assume the air of
good-humor.)
" 'I shall always be glad.'
" 'Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a morning.
You will have your affairs to attend to, and I have mine.'
" 'Then come in the evening.'
" 'Oh, no!' he answered briskly, 'you ought to go into society and see
your clients, and I myself have my friends at my cafe.'
" 'His friends!' thought I to myself.--'Very well,' said I, 'why not
come at dinner-time?'
" 'That is the time,' said Gobseck, 'after 'Change, at five o'clock.
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: and held it to his throat.
'Strike home, you accursed whelp!' he answered in a broken voice;
'it is better to die than to live to remember such shame as this.'
'No,' I said, 'I am no foreign murderer to kill a defenceless man.
You shall away to the justice to answer for yourself. The hangman
has a rope for such as you.'
'Then you must drag me thither,' he groaned, and shut his eyes as
though with faintness, and doubtless he was somewhat faint.
Now as I pondered on what should be done with the villain, it
chanced that I looked up through a gap in the fence, and there,
among the Grubswell Oaks three hundred yards or more away, I caught
Montezuma's Daughter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing
in a chariot--the charioteer of six winged horses--and of such a size that
he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a
hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number
of them by the men of those days. There were also in the interior of the
temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And
around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the
descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other
great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city
itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an
altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence,
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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 Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the chain of evidence that this woman knew something about the
murder in the quiet lane.
With this suspicion in his mind what Muller had learned from Knoll
was of great value to him, at all events of great interest. Was
it the housekeeper who had put out the light? For now Muller did
not doubt for a moment that this sudden extinguishing of the lamp
was a signal. He believed that Knoll had seen clearly and that he
had told truly what he had seen. A lamp that is blown out by the
wind flickers uneasily before going out. A sudden extinguishing of
the light means human agency. And the lamp was lit again a few
moments afterward and burned on steadily as before. A short time
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