| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: was watching and listening. He seemed to hear and see what no one
else could see or hear. He smiled slightly when the doctor spoke
of "heart disease," and his eyes fell on the revolver that lay near
the dead man's hand on the desk. Then he shook his head, and then
he started suddenly. Horn noticed the movement; it was in the moment
when the physician raised up the sunken figure that had fallen half
over the desk.
"He was killed by a bullet," said Muller.
"Yes, that was it," replied the doctor. With the raising of the
body the dead man's waistcoat fell back into its usual position,
and they could see a little round hole in his shirt. The doctor
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: lower laboratory, which occupies the left wing of the ground
floor. A small passage, entered by a door on the left-hand side
of the front of the building, separated this lower laboratory
from the dissecting-room, an out-house built on to the west
wall of the college, but now demolished. From this description
it will be seen that any person, provided with the necessary
keys, could enter the college by the side-door near the
dissecting room on the ground floor, and pass up through the
lower and upper laboratory into Professor Webster's lecture-room
without entering any other part of the building. The Professor
of Chemistry, by locking the doors of his lecture-rooms and the
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual
breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that
Providence should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and
could conceive that this great end might be effected even by a
warrior and a bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to
order matters so.
"The general! the general!" was now the cry. "Hush! silence! Old
Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech."
Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had
been drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his
feet to thank the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the
The Snow Image |
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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: The very whitest lamb in all my fold
Loves you: I know her: the worst thought she has
Is whiter even than her pretty hand:
She must prove true: for, brother, where two fight
The strongest wins, and truth and love are strength,
And you are happy: let her parents be.'
But Leolin cried out the more upon them--
Insolent, brainless, heartless! heiress, wealth,
Their wealth, their heiress! wealth enough was theirs
For twenty matches. Were he lord of this,
Why, twenty boys and girls should marry on it,
|
