| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: which had become the physical property of every object in
the new planet made the dancers bound to a height of thirty feet
or more into the air, considerably above the tops of the trees.
What followed was irresistibly comic. Four sturdy majos had
dragged along with them an old man incapable of resistance,
and compelled him, _nolens volens_, to join in the dance;
and as they all kept appearing and disappearing above the bank
of foliage, their grotesque attitudes, combined with the pitiable
countenance of their helpless victim, could not do otherwise
than recall most forcibly the story of Sancho Panza tossed
in a blanket by the merry drapers of Segovia.
|
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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: the gas fumes, which attack russia quickest, while calf and morocco
suffer not quite so much. I remember having a book some years
ago from the top shelf in the library of the London Institution,
where gas is used, and the whole of the back fell off in my hands,
although the volume in other respects seemed quite uninjured.
Thousands more were in a similar plight.
As the paper of the volumes is uninjured, it might be objected that,
after all, gas is not so much the enemy of the book itself as of its covering;
but then, re-binding always leaves a book smaller, and often deprives
it of leaves at the beginning or end, which the binder's wisdom has
thought useless. Oh! the havoc I have seen committed by binders.
|
