| 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: heavy door, well locked. And then he stooped and began punching
around the keyhole with the end of a lead-pencil. When he stood
up his face was exultant.
"It's locked on the inside," he said in a low tone. "There is
somebody in there."
"Lord have mercy!" gasped Liddy, and turned to run.
"Liddy," I called, "go through the house at once and see who is
missing, or if any one is. We'll have to clear this thing at
once. Mr. Jamieson, if you will watch here I will go to the
lodge and find Warner. Thomas would be of no use. Together you
may be able to force the door."
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: means of submitting their views on a given subject to the
judgment of crowds. Formerly it might have been correct to say
that politics were not a matter of sentiment. Can the same be
said to-day, when politics are more and more swayed by the
impulse of changeable crowds, who are uninfluenced by reason and
can only be guided by sentiment?
As to the press, which formerly directed opinion, it has had,
like governments, to humble itself before the power of crowds.
It wields, no doubt, a considerable influence, but only because
it is exclusively the reflection of the opinions of crowds and of
their incessant variations. Become a mere agency for the supply
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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 Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: already. But to me alone was the nature and seat of the
disorder known. How make the others understand it? They
might easily conceive it to be something different from the
fact, some actual lesion of the brain, an incurable insanity.
But this it was not. As yet, at least, he was no patient for
a mad-house: it would be unjust, probably it would be
impossible to have him committed. But on the other hand they
might take it too lightly, as the result of overwork, or
perhaps of the use of some narcotic. To me it was certain
that the trouble went far deeper than this. It lay in the
man's moral nature, in the error of his central will. It was
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: off our wealth and conveniences before the stranger, and had
a glass of wine, I think, in honour of our return, and
trooped at length one after another up the flying bridge of
plank, and lay down to sleep in our shattered, moon-pierced
barrack, we were among the happiest sovereigns in the world,
and certainly ruled over the most contented people. Yet, in
our absence, the palace had been sacked. Wild cats, so the
Hansons said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon,
a hatchet, and two knives.
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE
NO one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the
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