| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: prison room with the crooked pictures, the broken jug in the
attic, the meeting room with its long table. But nowhere was
there a trace of papers. Everything of that kind had either been
destroyed or taken away. And there was no sign of Annette.
"What you tell me about the girl puzzled me," said Mr. Carter.
"You believe that she deliberately went back?"
"It would seem so, sir. She ran upstairs while I was getting.
the door open."
"H'm, she must belong to the gang, then; but, being a woman,
didn't feel like standing by to see a personable young man
killed. But evidently she's in with them, or she wouldn't have
Secret Adversary |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: in missions. That has a good deal declined, which will surprise
you less. They go the wrong way to work; they are too parsonish,
too much of the old wife, and even the old apple wife. CLOTHES,
CLOTHES, are their idea; but clothes are not Christianity, any
more than they are the sun in heaven, or could take the place of
it! They think a parsonage with roses, and church bells, and nice
old women bobbing in the lanes, are part and parcel of religion.
But religion is a savage thing, like the universe it illuminates;
savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong.'
'And you found this island by an accident?' said Herrick.
'As you did!' said Attwater. 'And since then I have had a
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: heat from an apartment in which is a bagnio and other conveniences,
which render it both useful and pleasant. And these gardens have
been so the just admiration of the world, that it has been the
general diversion of the citizens to go out to see them, till the
crowds grew too great, and his lordship was obliged to restrain his
servants from showing them, except on one or two days in a week
only.
The house is built since these gardens have been finished. The
building is all of Portland stone in the front, which makes it look
extremely glorious and magnificent at a distance, it being the
particular property of that stone (except in the streets of London,
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he
will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength
you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child;
he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap
of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was
threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak
of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was,"
we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night,
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