| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: words. When he had looked at the tickets for a long time right way up,
he turned them upside down. Then he produced a fountain pen and
dated them with considerable care. The young man, having completed
an unostentatious survey of his fellow travellers, produced a book and
fell to reading. When Helen and Fanny were looking out of the window
at Chiselhurst--the place interested Fanny because the poor dear
Empress of the French used to live there--Miss Winchelsea took
the opportunity to observe the book the young man held. It was not
a guide-book, but a little thin volume of poetry--BOUND. She glanced
at his face--it seemed a refined pleasant face to her hasty glance.
He wore a little gilt pince-nez. "Do you think she lives there
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: Something of the 'accustomed irony,' which may perhaps be expected to sleep
in the ear of the multitude, is lurking here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil name. That
had arisen out of a peculiar mission which he had taken upon himself. The
enthusiastic Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the answer which he
received) had gone to Delphi and asked the oracle if there was any man
wiser than Socrates; and the answer was, that there was no man wiser. What
could be the meaning of this--that he who knew nothing, and knew that he
knew nothing, should be declared by the oracle to be the wisest of men?
Reflecting upon the answer, he determined to refute it by finding 'a
wiser;' and first he went to the politicians, and then to the poets, and
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