| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: big ranch, and its hospitality was famous all over the Southwest.
It was quite unnecessary to make special efforts to entertain,
but Webb and his wife took that means of relieving the strain on
them till night.
Higher crept the hot sun of baked Arizona. It passed the zenith
and began to descend toward the purple hills in the west, went
behind them with a great rainbow splash of brilliancy peculiar to
that country Dusk came, and died away in the midst of a
love-concert of quails. Velvet night, with its myriad stars,
entranced the land and made magic of its hills and valleys.
For the fiftieth time Webb dragged out his watch and consulted
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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: to know facts which were taking place around them than any critic
could be one hundred or three hundred years afterwards. But if
these mistakes as to facts actually exist in them, they are only a
fresh argument for their authenticity. Mary, writing in agony and
confusion, might easily make a mistake: forgers would only take
too good care to make none.
But the strongest evidence in favour of the letters and sonnets, in
spite of the arguments of good Dr. Whittaker and other apologists
for Mary, is to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse
days would have made Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana vein,
utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion
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