| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: doors of the bedroom were bolted on the inside?"
"Well----" I considered. "One must look at it logically."
"True."
"I should put it this way. The doors *WERE bolted--our own eyes
have told us that--yet the presence of the candle grease on the
floor, and the destruction of the will, prove that during the
night some one entered the room. You agree so far?"
"Perfectly. Put with admirable clearness. Proceed."
"Well," I said, encouraged, "as the person who entered did not do
so by the window, nor by miraculous means, it follows that the
door must have been opened from inside by Mrs. Inglethorp
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: against a number of hands that clutched him. It was a one-sided
fight. An inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet.
"I fell down," be said; I couldn't see in this pitchy
darkness."
There was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to
understand his words. Then the voice of Correa said: "He is but
newly formed. He stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean
nothing with his speech."
Others also said things about him that he heard or understood
imperfectly.
"May I sit up?" he asked, in a pause. "I will not struggle
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: end of each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he
also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay
with him. It is not like studying German, where you mull along,
in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just
as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you,
and there you are. No--and I see now, plainly enough, that the
great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off
it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make
you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn
German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip
What is Man? |
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 Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: rye roll. The clatter of dishes was giving way to the clink of
glasses.
In the big, bright kitchen back, of the Pink Fountain room
Miss Gussie Fink sat at her desk, calm, watchful, insolent-eyed, a
goddess sitting in judgment. On the pay roll of the Newest Hotel
Miss Gussie Fink's name appeared as kitchen checker, but her
regular job was goddessing. Her altar was a high desk in a corner
of the busy kitchen, and it was an altar of incense, of
burnt-offerings, and of showbread. Inexorable as a goddess of the
ancients was Miss Fink, and ten times as difficult to appease. For
this is the rule of the Newest Hotel, that no waiter may carry his
Buttered Side Down |
