| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: "Well, Mr. Lawrence Cavendish's evidence for instance?"
I was relieved.
"Oh, Lawrence! No, I don't think so. He's always a nervous
chap."
"His suggestion that his mother might have been poisoned
accidentally by means of the tonic she was taking, that did not
strike you as strange--hein?"
"No, I can't say it did. The doctors ridiculed it of course.
But it was quite a natural suggestion for a layman to make."
"But Monsieur Lawrence is not a layman. You told me yourself
that he had started by studying medicine, and that he had taken
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: domestic felicity, did not recollect that the corner-stone was
wanting, and that to receive good company with good cheer, the
means of the banquet ought to have been furnished by Sir Philip,
whose income (dilapidated as it was) was not equal to the display
of the hospitality required, and at the same time to the supply
of the good knight's MENUS PLAISIRS. So, in spite of all that
was so sagely suggested by female friends, Sir Philip carried his
good-humour everywhere abroad, and left at home a solitary
mansion and a pining spouse.
At length, inconvenienced in his money affairs, and tired even of
the short time which he spent in his own dull house, Sir Philip
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