| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: - just the substantiation of her own story that the plot to rob
Skarbolov lay at the door of Danglar and his gang; or, rather, perhaps,
that the plot was in existence before she had ever heard of Skarbolov.
It would prove her own statement of what the dying woman had said.
It would exonerate her from guilt; it would prove that, rather than
having any intention of committing crime, she had taken the only means
within her power of preventing one. The real Gypsy Nan, Danglar's
wife, who had died that night, bad, even in eleventh-hour penitence,
refused to implicate her criminal associates. There was a crime
projected which, unless she, Rhoda Gray, would agree to forestall
it in person and would give her oath not to warn the police about
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: smile, 'Mr. Naseby, I believe,' said he.
The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to
toe in one rapid and scornful glance, and decided on a course
at once. He must let the fellow see that he understood him.
'You are Mr. Van Tromp?' he returned roughly, and without
taking any notice of the proffered hand.
'The same, sir,' replied the Admiral. 'Pray be seated.'
'No sir,' said the Squire, point-blank, 'I will not be
seated. I am told that you are an admiral,' he added.
'No sir, I am not an admiral,' returned Van Tromp, who now
began to grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That
relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a
few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could
call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive
it. Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among
us. Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer
a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound
irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the
nation may be perpetuated. Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure
great men of private life; he was something more--he was a great fact.
In his sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably
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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 The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of expenditure.
And do you think that the late Bishop of J. P. Morgan and Company
stands alone as an utterer of scholarly blasphemy, a driver of
golden nails? In the course of this book there will march before
us a long line of the clerical retainers of Privilege, on their
way to the New Golgotha to crucify the carpenter's son: the
Rector of the Money Trust, the Preacher of the Coal Trust, the
Priest of the Traction Trust, the Archbishop of Tammany, the
Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club, the Pastor of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Editor of the New Haven, the
Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We shall try the
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