| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: that it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet.
He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct,
and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and make
a whole creature of him. After he had tried over all the sounds,
he began to finger out passages from things Miss Nellie had been practising,
passages that were already his, that lay under the bone of his pinched,
conical little skull, definite as animal desires.
The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood
behind it, but blind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences,
did not know they were there. He was feeling out the pattern
that lay all ready-made on the big and little keys.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: II
THE WANDERING ASSASSIN
The District Attorney and the Insurance Company were not in
agreement as to the fate of the Pitezel children. The former
still inclined to the hope and belief that they were in England
with Miss Williams, but the insurance company took a more
sinister view. No trace of them existed except a tin box found
among Holmes' effects, containing letters they had written to
their mother and grandparents from Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and
Detroit, which had been given to Holmes to dispatch but had never
reached their destination. The box contained letters from Mrs.
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
