| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: and beliefs like my own, to begin my restoration. Now as I
talk to you--That is why I have clutched at your company.
Because here you are, coming from thousands of miles away,
and you talk my ideas, you fall into my ways of thought as
though we had gone to the same school."
"Perhaps we HAVE gone to the same school," she said.
"You mean?"
"Disappointment. Disillusionment. Having to find something
better in life than the first things it promised us."
"But you--? Disappointed? I thought that in America people
might be educating already on different lines--"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: stranger facts still, but just as true, be relegated to the region
of myth, with the dream of Astyages, and the young and princely
herdsman playing at king over his fellow-slaves?
But enough of this. To me these bits of romance often seem the
truest, as well as the most important portions of history.
When old Herodotus tells me how, King Astyages having guarded the
frontier, Harpagus sent a hunter to young Cyrus with a fresh-killed
hare, telling him to open it in private; and how, sewn up in it was
the letter, telling him that the time to rebel was come, I am
inclined to say, That must be true. It is so beneath the dignity of
history, so quaint and unexpected, that it is all the more likely
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