| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: "I will consider nothing, Mr. Vere--your daughter's hand to-
night, or I depart, were it at midnight--there is my ultimatum."
"I embrace it," said Ellieslaw; "and I will leave you to talk
upon our military preparations, while I go to prepare my daughter
for so sudden a change of condition."
So saying, he left the company.
CHAPTER XIV.
He brings Earl Osmond to receive my vows.
O dreadful change! for Tancred, haughty Osmond.
TANCRED AND SIGISMUNDA.
Mr. Vere, whom long practice of dissimulation had enabled 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 The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: dwindled to a string of dark shapes and one smoking yellow flare
that presently became a mere indistinct smear upon the vast
horizon and the bright new day, that was at last altogether lost
to sight...
So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first fight of the airship
and the last fight of those strangest things in the whole history
of war: the ironclad battleships, which began their career with
the floating batteries of the Emperor Napoleon III in the Crimean
war and lasted, with an enormous expenditure of human energy and
resources, for seventy years. In that space of time the world
produced over twelve thousand five hundred of these strange
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