| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening
by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in
the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was
weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from
the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of
the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes
would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of
constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather,
I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr.
Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer.
"I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: in London as they are in Sydney.
DUCHESS OF BERWICK. Ah! we know your value, Mr. Hopper. We wish
there were more like you. It would make life so much easier. Do
you know, Mr. Hopper, dear Agatha and I are so much interested in
Australia. It must be so pretty with all the dear little kangaroos
flying about. Agatha has found it on the map. What a curious
shape it is! Just like a large packing case. However, it is a
very young country, isn't it?
HOPPER. Wasn't it made at the same time as the others, Duchess?
DUCHESS OF BERWICK. How clever you are, Mr. Hopper. You have a
cleverness quite of your own. Now I mustn't keep you.
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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 Jungle by Upton Sinclair: to himself. Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--
and once or twice, alas, a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
week--until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its
work without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his
head day and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him
as he went down the street. And from all the unending horror of
this there was a respite, a deliverance--he could drink! He could
forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly
again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will.
His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: period; and of a dozen other sides of life, each introducing some
vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the talk to himself that night,
we were all so glad to listen. The best talkers usually address
themselves to some particular society; there they are kings,
elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and yet be
ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow had a frank, headlong power of
style, and a broad, human choice of subject, that would have turned
any circle in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a Homeric
talker, plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and the people of
which he spoke became readily and clearly present to the minds of
those who heard him. This, with a certain added colouring of
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