| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of
typewritten manuscript on the editors desk.
"Here's some truck," said he, "that I paid cash for, and brought along
with me."
One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed their first pages
to the colonel.
Here are four short stories four of the highest priced authors in the
United States--three of 'em living in New York, and one commuting.
There's a special article on Vienna-bred society by Tom Vampson.
Here's an Italian serial by Captain Jack--no--it's the other Crawford.
Here are three separate exposes of city governments by Sniffings, and
 Options |
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 Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: poison all your families, and their inheritance will be yours--
fear nothing; you will go unpunished! You have committed
murder by poisoning, it is true; but the corpus delicti will
not be there because it can't be there!" This was a case, he
urged, of circumstantial evidence. "We have," he said, "gone
through a large number of facts. Of these there is not one that
does not go directly to the proof of poisoning, and that can only
be explained on the supposition of poisoning; whereas, if the
theory of the defence be admitted, all these facts, from the
first to the last, become meaningless and absurd. They can only
be refuted by arguments or explanations that are childish and
 A Book of Remarkable Criminals |