| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: "He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting for him," said
Madame Guillaume. "But you go to bed, don't you? And when he has lost,
the wretch wakes you."
"No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very good spirits. Not
unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he suggests that I should get
up and go into the woods."
"The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a small set of rooms that
his bedroom and his sitting-room are not enough, and that he must run
about? But it is just to give you cold that the wretch proposes such
expeditions. He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man
settled in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a
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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 Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: his professional instincts, of his practical common-sense, too,
perhaps, ... at least as far as his own advancement was concerned,
and he warned the victim, defeating his own work. This peculiarity
of Muller's character caused his undoing at last, his official
undoing that is, and compelled his retirement from the force. But
his advice is often sought unofficially by the Department, and to
those who know, Muller's hand can be seen in the unravelling of
many a famous case.
The following stories are but a few of the many interesting cases
that have come within the experience of this great detective.
But they give a fair portrayal of Muller's peculiar method of
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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 Republic by Plato: the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the
fortunate, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, I
say, leave.
And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian harmonies of which I was
just now speaking.
Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our songs and
melodies, we shall not want multiplicity of notes or a panharmonic scale?
I suppose not.
Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with three corners and
complex scales, or the makers of any other many-stringed curiously-
harmonised instruments?
The Republic |
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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and women. But
it is equally true of what are called educated people. For an
educated person's ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art
has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what
Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past
is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real
perfection depends. A temperament capable of receiving, through an
imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and
beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate
a work of art. And true as this is in the case of the appreciation
of sculpture and painting, it is still more true of the
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