| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: choosing among unlimited possibilities. Yet while he dreamt other
influences were directing his movements. There were for instance
his mother, Lady Marayne, who saw a very different London from what
he did, and his mother Dame Nature, who cannot see London at all.
She was busy in his blood as she is busy in the blood of most
healthy young men; common experience must fill the gaps for us; and
patiently and thoroughly she was preparing for the entrance of that
heroine, whom not the most self-centred of heroes can altogether
avoid. . . .
And then there was the power of every day. Benham imagined himself
at large on his liberating steed of property while indeed he was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: prodded Ted.
"Humph! I make eight thousand a year to his seven! But I don't blow it all
in and waste it and throw it around, the way he does! Don't believe in this
business of going and spending a whole lot of money to show off and--"
They went, with ardor and some thoroughness, into the matters of streamline
bodies, hill-climbing power, wire wheels, chrome steel, ignition systems, and
body colors. It was much more than a study of transportation. It was an
aspiration for knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, in the barbarous
twentieth century, a family's motor indicated its social rank as precisely as
the grades of the peerage determined the rank of an English family--indeed,
more precisely, considering the opinion of old county families upon newly
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