| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: pivotal "feature." Mary Boyne and her husband, in quest of a
country place in one of the southern or southwestern counties,
had, on their arrival in England, carried their problem straight
to Alida Stair, who had successfully solved it in her own case;
but it was not until they had rejected, almost capriciously,
several practical and judicious suggestions that she threw it
out: "Well, there's Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to Hugo's
cousins, and you can get it for a song."
The reasons she gave for its being obtainable on these terms--its
remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water
pipes, and other vulgar necessities--were exactly those pleading
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: they were empty, were the equivalents of astoundingly decorated
predecessors. Perhaps it was just as well there was no inherited
memory.
Ann Veronica was by this time quite shocked at her own thoughts,
and yet they would go on with their freaks. Great vistas of
history opened, and she and her aunt were near reverting to the
primitive and passionate and entirely indecorous arboreal--were
swinging from branches by the arms, and really going on quite
dread-fully--when their arrival at the Palsworthys' happily
checked this play of fancy, and brought Ann Veronica back to the
exigencies of the wrappered life again.
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