| 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 Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: at all likely that a murderer would go away leaving such evidence
behind him? If Graumaun had killed Siders in a hasty quarrel, he
might possibly, in his excitement, have left his revolver. But I
have already disposed of this possibility. A man of sufficient
brains to so carefully plan his suicide as to conceal every trace
of it and cast suspicion upon the man who had made him unhappy, such
a one would be quite clever enough to throw the pistol far away
from his body and to leave no traces of powder on his coat or any
such other evidence.
"If I were to say now what I think, I would say that John Siders
deliberately took his own life and planned it in such a way as to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: there came down from Haamau, a man, his wife, and a girl of twelve,
their daughter, bringing fungus. Several Atuona lads were hanging
round the store; but the day being one of truce none apprehended
danger. The fungus was weighed and paid for; the man of Haamau
proposed he should have his axe ground in the bargain; and Mr.
Stewart demurring at the trouble, some of the Atuona lads offered
to grind it for him, and set it on the wheel. While the axe was
grinding, a friendly native whispered Mr. Stewart to have a care of
himself, for there was trouble in hand; and, all at once, the man
of Haamau was seized, and his head and arm stricken from his body,
the head at one sweep of his own newly sharpened axe. In the first
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