| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: carried a gun for me for years, and the same train wouldn't hold
both of us. Of course, I thought that he was in the coach just
behind ours."
Hotchkiss was leaning forward now, his eyes narrowed, his thin
lips drawn to a line.
"Are you left-handed, Mr. Sullivan?" he asked.
Sullivan stopped in surprise.
"No," he said gruffly. "Can't do anything with my left hand."
Hotchkiss subsided, crestfallen but alert. "I tore up that cursed
telegram, but I was afraid to throw the scraps away. Then I looked
around for lower ten. It was almost exactly across - my berth was
The Man in Lower Ten |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: long-followed laws, and where indeed disorder might cry
`Weakness and Ill-doing!' But I should be judged rather
as a general sent to bring under government an enemy people,
numerous, heathen, living in a most difficult, unknown and
pathless country. And to do this I had many good men,
it is true, but also a host that was not good, but was factious,
turbulent, sensual and idle. Yet have I brought these strange
lands and naked peoples under the Sovereigns, giving them
the lordship of a new world. What say my accusers? They
say that I have taken great honors and wealth and nobility
for myself and my house. Even they say, O my friend!
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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 Before Adam by Jack London: pounds. He was the largest one of our kind I ever saw.
Nor did I ever see one of the Fire People so large as
he, nor one of the Tree People. Sometimes, when in the
newspapers I happen upon descriptions of our modern
bruisers and prizefighters, I wonder what chance the
best of them would have had against him.
I am afraid not much of a chance. With one grip of his
iron fingers and a pull, he could have plucked a
muscle, say a biceps, by the roots, clear out of their
bodies. A back-handed, loose blow of his fist could
have smashed their skulls like egg-shells. With a sweep
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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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: shall know the whole story, for I shall go to see the Marquis
d'Espard."
People who have outlived the age when a man wastes his vitality at
random, know how great an influence may be exercised on more important
events by apparently trivial incidents, and will not be surprised at
the weight here given to the following minor fact. Next day Popinot
had an attack of coryza, a complaint which is not dangerous, and
generally known by the absurd and inadequate name of a cold in the
head.
The judge, who could not suppose that the delay could be serious,
feeling himself a little feverish, kept his room, and did not go to
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