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: waking him. I did not move for a moment; ridiculous things Liddy
had said about a ghost--I am not at all superstitious, except,
perhaps, in the middle of the night, with everything dark--things
like that came back to me. Almost beside me was the clothes
chute. I could feel it, but I could see nothing. As I stood,
listening intently, I heard a sound near me. It was vague,
indefinite. Then it ceased; there was an uneasy movement and a
grunt from the foot of the circular staircase, and silence again.
I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe.
Then I knew I had been right. Some one was stealthily-passing
the head of the staircase and coming toward me in the dark. I
 The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: greater rigour he sent into the country for the lord chief
justice, who was dreaded by all for his unflinching severity.
The lord chancellor, in his account of these transactions,
assures us many of the witnesses who gave evidence against those
indicted with firing the capital "were produced as if their
testimony would remove all doubts, but made such senseless
relations of what they had been told, without knowing the
condition of the persons who told them, or where to find them,
that it was a hard matter to forbear smiling at their
declarations." Amongst those examined was one Roger Hubert, who
accused himself of having deliberately set the city on fire.
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