| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: everything taken, including groceries and a case of champane. The
Summer People got together the next day at the Club and offered a
reward of two hundred dollars, and engaged a night watchman with a
motor-cycle, which I considered silly, as one could hear him coming
when to miles off, and any how he spent most of the time taking the
maids for rides, and broke an arm for one of them.
Jane spent the night with me, and being unable to sleep, owing to
dieting again and having an emty stomache, wakened me at 2 A. M.
and we went to the pantrey together. When going back upstairs with
some cake and canned pairs, we heard a door close below. We both
shreiked, and the Familey got up, but found no one except Leila,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: the Silences and grasped mine!
Wasn't it weird?
And I know who it was, too. A distant relative
of Mamma's on her father's side, by marriage, was
one of the men who signed the Constitution of the
United States in Faneuil Hall, in Philadelphia, in
1776, and it was HIS spirit that was trying to de-
liver his message through me!
And only last year I came across a very similar
case. Only this was stranger than mine, if any-
thing. For it happened on a typewriter -- which
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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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: grasp, till the beast, snorting with pain, sunk beside his
companion. All this was achieved in much less time than is
occupied in the recital. The brief space had, however, been
sufficient for a man, followed by a number of servants, to
rush from the house before which the accident had occurred,
and, as the coachman opened the door of the carriage, to
take from it a lady who was convulsively grasping the
cushions with one hand, while with the other she pressed to
her bosom the young boy, who had lost consciousness.
Monte Cristo carried them both to the salon, and deposited
them on a sofa. "Compose yourself, madame," said he; "all
 The Count of Monte Cristo |
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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: the man, it was not easy to venerate the husband. With proper
restrictions however, I revere the institution which fraternizes
the world. I exclaim against the laws which throw the whole weight
of the yoke on the weaker shoulders, and force women, when they
claim protectorship as mothers, to sign a contract, which renders
them dependent on the caprice of the tyrant, whom choice or necessity
has appointed to reign over them. Various are the cases, in which
a woman ought to separate herself from her husband; and mine,
I may be allowed emphatically to insist, comes under the description
of the most aggravated.
"I will not enlarge on those provocations which only the
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