| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out
aloud to God, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and
left me alone. He had made his choice; God help us. I would pray
for him, but to what end? there are sins that not even the Pope can
loose.'
'And your friend,' I asked, 'what became of him?'
'Nay, God knows,' said the muleteer. 'If all be true that we hear,
his end was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair.'
'Do you mean that he was killed?' I asked.
'Sure enough, he was killed,' returned the man. 'But how? Ay,
how? But these are things that it is sin to speak of.'
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: Another observed that the love of tulips agreed perfectly
well with that of politics, and that it was proved in
history that many very dangerous men were engaged in
gardening, just as if it had been their profession, whilst
really they occupied themselves with perfectly different
concerns; witness Tarquin the Elder, who grew poppies at
Gabii, and the Great Conde, who watered his carnations at
the dungeon of Vincennes at the very moment when the former
meditated his return to Rome, and the latter his escape from
prison.
The judge summed up with the following dilemma: --
 The Black Tulip |