| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: for my informants were men speaking with the plainness of the
laity; and I heard plenty of complaints of Damien. Why was this
never mentioned? and how came it to you in the retirement of your
clerical parlour?
But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scandal, when I read
it in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before;
and I must tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu;
he, in a public-house on the beach, volunteered the statement that
Damien had "contracted the disease from having connection with the
female lepers"; and I find a joy in telling you how the report was
welcomed in a public-house. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: made such a declaration, I should have thought it as capricious
as that of the clergyman, who, without vindicating his false
reading, preferred, from habit's sake, his old Mumpsimus to the
modern Sumpsimus."
"Well," answered my aunt, "I must explain my inconsistency in
this particular by comparing it to another. I am, as you know, a
piece of that old-fashioned thing called a Jacobite; but I am so
in sentiment and feeling only, for a more loyal subject never
joined in prayers for the health and wealth of George the Fourth,
whom God long preserve! But I dare say that kind-hearted
sovereign would not deem that an old woman did him much injury if
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