| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: one carrying a frying-pan and a kettle, the other with a basket of
lunch on his arm. Then I see the bright flames leaping up in the
fireplace, and hear the trout sizzling in the pan, and smell the
appetizing odour. Now I see the lads coming back across the foot-
bridge that spans the stream, with a bottle of milk from the nearest
farmhouse. They are laughing and teetering as they balance along
the single plank. Now the table is spread on the moss. How good
the lunch tastes! Never were there such pink-fleshed trout, such
crisp and savoury slices of broiled bacon. Douglas, (the beloved
doll that the younger lad shamefacedly brings out from the pocket of
his jacket,) must certainly have some of it. And after the lunch is
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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 Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: gown-hem, an' she stooped to the pull o' that liddle hand.'
Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and
smiled at it as he went on.
"'Will the sea drown the Marsh?" she says. She was a
Marsh woman first an' foremost.
"'No," says the liddle voice. "Sleep sound for all o' that."
"'Is the Plague comin' to the Marsh?" she says. Them
was all the ills she knowed.
"'No. Sleep sound for all o' that," says Robin.
'She turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle
voices grieved that shrill an' sorrowful she turns back, an'
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