| 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: specially sharpened scimitar, and it's off with your head if I'm
at all displeased with you!' Miss Cynthia, she was what they call
an Apache, or some such name--a Frenchified sort of cut-throat, I
take it to be. A real sight she looked. You'd never have
believed a pretty young lady like that could have made herself
into such a ruffian. Nobody would have known her."
"These evenings must have been great fun," said Poirot genially.
"I suppose Mr. Lawrence wore that fine black beard in the chest
upstairs, when he was Shah of Persia?"
"He did have a beard, sir," replied Dorcas, smiling. "And well I
know it, for he borrowed two skeins of my black wool to make it
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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: become a free woman that her father was irradiated with the
project; and though he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never
knew how he came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his
gig to pursue his way homeward. But home he found himself, his
brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously as a gong in
the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, he was
accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if
he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a
heap of rendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under
a privet-hedge.
The Woodlanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: CROMWELL.
One good among you, none of you are bad.--
For my part, it best fits me be alone;
Sadness with me, not I with any one.
What, is the king acquainted with my cause?
NORFOLK.
We have, and he hath answered us, my Lord.
CROMWELL.
How, shall I come to speak with him my self?
GARDINER.
The King is so advertised of your guilt,
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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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered
alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of
Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the
responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of
a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began
a great book on Law.
But he was not allowed to enjoy the monastic peace he had hoped for.
When the celestial Angelique saw him desert worldly society to work at
home with such regularity, she tried to convert him. It had been a
real sorrow to her to know that her husband's opinions were not
strictly Christian; and she sometimes wept as she reflected that if
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