| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity
said: "Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period
her brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See?
Yeh've edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she
went to work, having the feminine aversion of going to hell.
By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they
made collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a
room where sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent.
She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day,
turning out collars, the name of whose brand could be noted for its
irrelevancy to anything in connection with collars. At night she
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: article, and saw instead the two little faces as they had looked
when I hurriedly left them--felt the innocent child's kiss so
timidly given, and heard again their earnest words of farewell,
and realised that I had received another burden to carry to my
grave with me, equal, if not worse, than the horrors of Nannie
Williams' death."
Questioned by the district attorney, Holmes met this fresh
evidence by evoking once again the mythical Edward Hatch and
suggesting that Miss Minnie Williams, in a "hellish wish for
vengeance" because of Holmes' fancied desertion, and in order to
make it appear probable that he, and not she, had murdered her
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits,
and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The
fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a
clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately
as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of
the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected
that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of
fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a
peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The
son of a wealthy _bourgeois_ disappeared about the same time, but
afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the
The Devil's Dictionary |
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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: peculiarly English.
The little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore
testimony to the devotion of ages long past, lay amidst pastures
and cornfields of small extent, but bounded and divided with
hedgerow timber of great age and size. There were few marks of
modern improvement. The environs of the place intimated neither
the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were
old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured
freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by
a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.
Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the
|
