| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: Monastier, when I learned that the population lived together on
very quiet terms; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities
between households thus doubly separated. Black Camisard and White
Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant prophet
and Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all been sabring
and shooting, burning, pillaging, and murdering, their hearts hot
with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy
years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in
mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man,
like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating
virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring various harvests;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: what I have confessed to him. Many a time have I wished that he were dead,
and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to
die: so that I am at my wit's end.
And this is what I and many others have suffered from the flute-playing of
this satyr. Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact the image is,
and how marvellous his power. For let me tell you; none of you know him;
but I will reveal him to you; having begun, I must go on. See you how fond
he is of the fair? He is always with them and is always being smitten by
them, and then again he knows nothing and is ignorant of all things--such
is the appearance which he puts on. Is he not like a Silenus in this? To
be sure he is: his outer mask is the carved head of the Silenus; but, O my
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: saw Pedro in the path called Seventeen and coming towards the
central houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he
told them as much. "In a little while," he prophesied, "Pedro will
be here." An old man remarked that Pedro had no business on path
Seventeen, and then, as if in confirmation, that individual as he
drew near turned and went transversely into path Ten, and so back
with nimble paces towards the outer wall. They mocked Nunez when
Pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questions
to clear his character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and was
afterwards hostile to him.
Then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping
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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 Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist
a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
