| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: "When I approached the field near their house,
I saw at one end of it, in the direction of the pa-
rade ground, something very huge and black, and
I heard sounds of fife and drum proceeding from
it. My heart had been full of song, and I had
heard in imagination the tune of the mazurka,
but this was very harsh music. It was not pleas-
ant.
"'What can that be?' I thought, and went
towards the sound by a slippery path through the
centre of the field. Walking about a hundred
The Forged Coupon |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "How comes it, crone," said the King's daughter, "that you waver
like a rag, and pale like a dead leaf before my eyes?"
"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour
of my power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo!
she was but stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and
the sand lice hopped upon the place of her.
"This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said
the King's daughter of Duntrine.
But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale. "I am
weary of the wind," quoth she; and she bewailed her day.
The King's daughter was aware of a man upon the beach; he went
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