| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: ridicule could ever convince a man of such decided opinions that he
is not the one infallible person in the world.
But Albert Graumann had learned his lesson. And he told Muller
himself that the few days of life which might remain to him were a
gift to him from the detective. He felt that his weak heart would
not have stood the strain and the disgrace of an open trial, even
if that trial ended in acquittal. Two months later he was found
dead in his bed, a calm smile on his lips.
Before he died he had learned that it was the Undaunted courage of
his timid little old aunt that had brought Muller to take charge of
the case and to free her beloved nephew from the dreaded prison.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: --it might have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the
street-performer. Will he succeed at last? Will that stubborn
door be suddenly flung open? Will a group of joyous children,
the young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing,
into the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with
eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper for
long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?
But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables as well
as its exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this repetition
of light popular tunes at its door-step. It would be an ugly
business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the
existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of
death, fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death
is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of
knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their
fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is
not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the
conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect only I
believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be
wiser than they are:--that whereas I know but little of the world below, I
do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience
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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 Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: cident. The two stout boatmen, stimulated moreover by
the promise of double fare, did not doubt of succeeding in
this difficult passage of the Irtych.
But they reckoned without an accident which they were
powerless to prevent, and neither their zeal nor their skill-
fulness could, under the circumstances, have done more.
The boat was in the middle of the current, at nearly equal
distances from either shore, and being carried down at the
rate of two versts an hour, when Michael, springing to his
feet, bent his gaze up the river.
Several boats, aided by oars as well as by the current,
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