| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: as a pleasure excursion before our return . . .
SUNDAY. - Another beautiful day. My father and I walked into
Dumfries to church. When the service was done I noted the two
halberts laid against the pillar of the churchyard gate; and as I
had not seen the little weekly pomp of civic dignitaries in our
Scotch country towns for some years, I made my father wait. You
should have seen the provost and three bailies going stately away
down the sunlit street, and the two town servants strutting in
front of them, in red coats and cocked hats, and with the halberts
most conspicuously shouldered. We saw Burns's house - a place that
made me deeply sad - and spent the afternoon down the banks of the
|
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: cut representing a celestial lamp, a symbolic radiance, shining
through darkness, and on either side a kneeling angel with folded
wings. And beneath this rudely wrought symbol of the Perpetual
Calm appeared in big, coarse type the title of a prayer that has
been offered up through many a century, doubtless, by wives of
Spanish mariners,--Contra las Tempestades.
Once she became very much frightened. After a partial lull the
storm had suddenly redoubled its force: the ground shook; the
house quivered and creaked; the wind brayed and screamed and
pushed and scuffled at the door; and the water, which had been
whipping in through every crevice, all at once rose over the
|
