| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words;
Sometime 'tis mad, and too much talk affords.
The little birds that tune their morning's joy
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody.
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;
Sad souls are slain in merry company:
Grief best is pleas'd with grief's society:
True sorrow then is feelingly suffic'd
When with like semblance it is sympathiz'd.
'Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;
He ten times pines that pines beholding food;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: Waits for the ending of my father's line
To fall upon our city.
SIMONE. Hush! your father
When he is childless will be happier.
As for the State, I think our state of Florence
Needs no adulterous pilot at its helm.
Your life would soil its lilies.
GUIDO. Take off your hands
Take off your damned hands. Loose me, I say!
SIMONE. Nay, you are caught in such a cunning vice
That nothing will avail you, and your life
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: incoherent, and so incomplete. For the evidence of guilt which they
contain is, after all, slight and indirect, and, moreover,
superfluous altogether; seeing that Mary's guilt was open and
palpable, before the supposed discovery of the letters, to every
person at home and abroad who had any knowledge of the facts. As
for the alleged inconsistency of the letters with proven facts:
the answer is, that whosoever wrote the letters would be more likely
to know facts which were taking place around them than any critic
could be one hundred or three hundred years afterwards. But if
these mistakes as to facts actually exist in them, they are only a
fresh argument for their authenticity. Mary, writing in agony and
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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 Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: "Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall be out of my job
before long - she'll have the whole post in her hands. I must make
a stand, I must not go down without a struggle. These
encroachments. . . . Dorcas, what do you think she will think of
next?"
"Marse Tom, she don't mean any harm."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Yes, Marse Tom."
"You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?"
"I don't know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know she hasn't."
"Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied. What else have
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