| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'this Oglethorpe - how is he now?'
'Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole bang
through him,' said Sam. 'The doctor hasn't been yet. He'd
'a' been bright and early if it had been a passenger. But,
doctor or no, I'll make a good guess that Tom won't see to-
morrow. He'll die on a Sunday, will poor Tom; and they do
say that's fortunate.'
'Did Tom see him that did it?' asked Jonathan.
'Well, he saw him,' replied Sam, 'but not to swear by. Said
he was a very tall man, and very big, and had a 'ankerchief
about his face, and a very quick shot, and sat his horse like
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: bringing the murderer to justice? Was it not plain to you that I
was speaking of two entirely different persons?"
"No," I said, "it was not plain to me!"
"Then again," continued Poirot, "at the beginning, did I not
repeat to you several times that I didn't want Mr. Inglethorp
arrested *NOW? That should have conveyed something to you."
"Do you mean to say you suspected him as long ago as that?"
"Yes. To begin with, whoever else might benefit by Mrs.
Inglethorp's death, her husband would benefit the most. There
was no getting away from that. When I went up to Styles with you
that first day, I had no idea as to how the crime had been
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister,
and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect
and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one
another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale
felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand -- with that gesture
so habitual as to have
653 THE SCARLET LETTER
The Scarlet Letter |
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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: yearning for self-education. That is to say, he loved to read books,
even though their contents came alike to him whether they were books
of heroic adventure or mere grammars or liturgical compendia. As I
say, he perused every book with an equal amount of attention, and, had
he been offered a work on chemistry, would have accepted that also.
Not the words which he read, but the mere solace derived from the act
of reading, was what especially pleased his mind; even though at any
moment there might launch itself from the page some devil-sent word
whereof he could make neither head nor tail. For the most part, his
task of reading was performed in a recumbent position in the anteroom;
which circumstance ended by causing his mattress to become as ragged
Dead Souls |
