| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the murderer went out through that door, dragging something after
him that made this delicate line? Muller bent down still deeper.
The sun shone brightly on the floor, sending its clear rays
obliquely through the window. The sharp eyes which now covered
every inch of the yellow-painted floor discovered something else.
They discovered that this red thread curved slightly and had a
continuation in a fine scratch in the paint of the floor. Muller
followed up this scratch and it led him over towards the window and
then back again in wide curves, then out again under the desk and
finally, growing weaker and weaker, it came back to the neighbourhood
of the pool of blood, but on the opposite side of it. Muller got
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: favoured and fertile section of the garden with a vegetable that
none of us could eat, in supreme contempt for our opinion. If you
asked him to send you in one of your own artichokes, "THAT I WULL,
MEM," he would say, "WITH PLEASURE, FOR IT IS MAIR BLESSED TO GIVE
THAN TO RECEIVE." Ay, and even when, by extra twisting of the
screw, we prevailed on him to prefer our commands to his own
inclination, and he went away, stately and sad, professing that
"OUR WULL WAS HIS PLEASURE," but yet reminding us that he would do
it "WITH FEELIN'S," - even then, I say, the triumphant master felt
humbled in his triumph, felt that he ruled on sufferance only, that
he was taking a mean advantage of the other's low estate, and that
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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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: swiftly down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the white,
dusty road, while its occupant gazed with eager, unsated eyes on
the great panorama that stretched before her. The earth rolled in
waves like a mighty sea to the distant horizon line. From a
wonderful blue sky poured down upon the land a bath of sunbeat.
The air was like wine, pure and strong, and above the desert swam
the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. Surely here was a peace
primeval, a silence unbroken since the birth of creation.
It was all new to her, and wonderfully exhilarating. The infinite
roll of plain, the distant shining mountains, the multitudinous
voices of the desert drowned in a sunlit sea of space--they were
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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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had
guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always
seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it
for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she
perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their
transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her
familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust
in the goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the
roof of Bunner Sisters.
But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The
care of Evelina filled Ann Eliza's days and nights. The hastily
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