| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the tray was a small book from the Casanova library. It was
called The Unseen World and had a cheerful cover on which a
half-dozen sheeted figures linked hands around a headstone.
At this point in my story, Halsey always says: "Trust a woman to
add two and two together, and make six." To which I retort that
if two and two plus X make six, then to discover the unknown
quantity is the simplest thing in the world. That a houseful of
detectives missed it entirely was because they were busy trying
to prove that two and two make four.
The depression due to my visit to the hospital left me at the
prospect of seeing Halsey again that night. It was about five
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: architecture of the brain, which is indeed to the sense of the
beautiful as the eye or the ear to the sense of hearing or
sight. We admire splendid views and great pictures; and yet
what is truly admirable is rather the mind within us, that
gathers together these scattered details for its delight, and
makes out of certain colours, certain distributions of
graduated light and darkness, that intelligible whole which
alone we call a picture or a view. Hazlitt, relating in one
of his essays how he went on foot from one great man's house
to another's in search of works of art, begins suddenly to
triumph over these noble and wealthy owners, because he was
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: controversy as to HOW it shall be kept?
Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced,
so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave?
And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the
enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that
"the citizen of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States?"
I take the official oath today with no mental reservations,
and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by
any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: endeavour to persuade their wives to embrace Christianity, he
married the two other couple; but Will Atkins and his wife were not
yet come in. After this, my clergyman, waiting a while, was
curious to know where Atkins was gone, and turning to me, said, "I
entreat you, sir, let us walk out of your labyrinth here and look;
I daresay we shall find this poor man somewhere or other talking
seriously to his wife, and teaching her already something of
religion." I began to be of the same mind; so we went out
together, and I carried him a way which none knew but myself, and
where the trees were so very thick that it was not easy to see
through the thicket of leaves, and far harder to see in than to see
Robinson Crusoe |
