| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: orderly arrangement of the room. "Pardon my unceremonious entrance,
but I had no idea you were here, sir; we received a telephone
message that a burglar had broken in here."
"You did!" Kent stared at him. Was he right, after all, in his
conjecture; had the man been Philip Rochester? It would seem so,
for who else, after taking refuge elsewhere, would have telephoned
a warning of burglars to the hotel office? "Have you any idea who
sent the message, Mr. Stuart?"
"I have not; it was an out-side call -" Stuart turned to his
companion. "Sorry I brought you here on an idiotic chase, Mr.
Ferguson."
The Red Seal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the
imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed.
She was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained;
and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt,
she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered
the court she threw her eyes round it and quickly discovered where
we were seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us,
but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection
seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness.
The trial began, and after the advocate against her had stated the charge,
several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined against her,
Frankenstein |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: against the merits which Terence admired. St. John Hirst said
that she was in love with him; she would never forgive that;
but the argument was not one to appeal to a man.
"But I like him," she said, and she thought to herself that she also
pitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside the warm
mysterious globe full of changes and miracles in which we ourselves
move about; she thought that it must be very dull to be St. John Hirst.
She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she would
not kiss him supposing he wished it, which was not likely.
As if some apology were due to Hirst for the kiss which she then
bestowed upon him, Terence protested:
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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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: these rafts and have a ride.
By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that
now-departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in,
in this place, a chapter from a book which I have been working at,
by fits and starts, during the past five or six years,
and may possibly finish in the course of five or six more.
The book is a story which details some passages in the life
of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town
drunkard of my time out west, there. He has run away from
his persecuting father, and from a persecuting good widow who
wishes to make a nice, truth-telling, respectable boy of him;
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