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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: had accepted my letter from the Great Eyrie, five weeks before.
But this was not the general attitude toward the present letter,
neither in Washington, nor in the rest of America. To the few who
would have maintained that the document should not be taken
seriously, an immense majority would have responded. "This letter has
not the style nor the spirit of a jester. Only one man could have
written it; and that is the inventor of this unapproachable machine."
To most people this conclusion seemed indisputable owing to a curious
state of mind easily explainable. For all the strange facts of which
the key had hitherto been lacking, this letter furnished an
explanation. The theory now almost universally accepted was as
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