| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: "And the morning sun in its eye."
"Like an eagle, George,--like an eagle!"
So he broached to me what speedily became the leading occupation
of his culminating years, Crest Hill. But all the world has
heard of that extravagant place which grew and changed its plans
as it grew, and bubbled like a salted snail, and burgeoned and
bulged and evermore grew. I know not what delirium of pinnacles
and terraces and arcades and corridors glittered at last upon the
uplands of his mind; the place, for all that its expansion was
terminated abruptly by our collapse, is wonderful enough as it
stands,--that empty instinctive building of a childless man. His
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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 Underground City by Jules Verne: James Starr tore it open. It contained only a scrap of paper,
yellowed by time, and apparently torn out of an old copy book.
On this paper was written a single sentence, thus worded:
"It is useless for the engineer James Starr to trouble himself,
Simon Ford's letter being now without object."
No signature.
CHAPTER II ON THE ROAD
THE course of James Starr's ideas was abruptly stopped,
when he got this second letter contradicting the first.
"What does this mean?" said he to himself. He took up the torn envelope,
and examined it. Like the other, it bore the Aberfoyle postmark.
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