| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the hunting castle shortly after midnight, they found the terrified
servants standing by the body of their master.
"Well, Muller, you had better luck than you deserved this time,"
Bauer said a few days later. "This last trick has made you quite
impossible for the service. But you needn't worry about that,
because the legacy Kniepp left you will put you out of reach of
want."
The detective was as much surprised as anybody. He was as if dazed
by his unexpected good fortune. The day before he was a poor man
bowed under the weight of sordid cares, and now he was the possessor
of twenty thousand gulden. And it was not his clever brain but his
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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 Market-Place by Harold Frederic: 'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being
a difficult lady--'uncertain, coy, and hard to please'
as Scott says, you know--and it must be a very skilfully-
dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface.
She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it.
Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian,
you know. I was strongly opposed to the marriage, but her
mother carried it through. But--yes--about her--I think
she is afraid to marry again. If she does ever consent,
it will be because poverty has broken her nerve.
If she is kept on six hundred a year, she may be starved,
The Market-Place |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: a man ENTITLED to desire a child?
Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions,
the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.
Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or
discord in thee?
I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments
shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.
Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built
thyself, rectangular in body and soul.
Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose
may the garden of marriage help thee!
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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 Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: prejudice in favour of Property shook her head, something else
was there too, shouting in his mind to drown all these saner
considerations, the intoxicating thought of riding beside Her all
to-day, all to-morrow, perhaps for other days after that. Of
talking to her familiarly, being brother of all her slender
strength and freshness, of having a golden, real, and wonderful
time beyond all his imaginings. His old familiar fancyings gave
place to anticipations as impalpable and fluctuating and
beautiful as the sunset of a summer day.
At Havant he took an opportunity to purchase, at small
hairdresser's in the main street, a toothbrush,pair of nail
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