| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: senator or something."
I was leading the way to the stairs, but I stopped. "I might
have known it," I said. "He hasn't been natural all evening.
What's the matter with him? Too much fast?"
"Fast!" He laughed. "Too much feast! He's got as pretty a case
of indigestion as I've seen for some time. He's giving a
demonstration that's almost theatrical."
Well, he insisted it was indigestion, although I argued that it
wasn't possible, and he wanted ipecac.
"I haven't seen a pharmacopoeia for so long that I wouldn't know
one if I met it," he declared, "but I've got a system 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 Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to
herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight
of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description
was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men,
but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a
fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a
tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was
heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and
the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll
still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it
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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 White Moll by Frank L. Packard: could not sacrifice its disguise to any one. Danglar had been a
little suspicious of it until she had explained that she was
suffering from a cold.
"Oh!" she said calmly. "It's you, is it? And what brought you
here?"
"What do you suppose?" he complained irritably. "The same old
thing, all I'm good for - to write out code messages and deliver
them like an errand boy! It's a sweet job, isn't it? How'd you
like to be a deformed little cripple?"
She did not answer at once. The night seemed suddenly to be opening
some strange, even premonitory, vista. The code messages! Their
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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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: comparatively rare.--A similar process has recently been suggested
as a means of detection in cases of forgery, for when documents
are exposed to iodine vapour, effaced or altered writing is
restored.--Women doctors will diminish the opportunities of
immorality.--The free expression of opinion will do more to
prevent its possible dangers than trials of a more or less
scandalous kind.--Piracy, which was not extirpated by
punishments which are now obsolete, is disappearing under the
effects of steam navigation.--The spread of Malthusian ideas
prevents abortion and infanticides.[15]--Systematic bookkeeping,
by its clearness and simplicity, obviates many frauds and
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