| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: himself like a person only distantly interested in the event;
pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders
punctually; took ship and came to Sydney. Some men are still
lads at twenty-five; and so it was with Norris. Eighteen days
after he landed, his quarter's allowance was all gone, and with
the light-hearted hopefulness of strangers in what is called a
new country, he began to besiege offices and apply for all
manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last of all
from his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself
reduced, in a very elegant suit of summer tweeds, to herd and
camp with the degraded outcasts of the city.
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: as my guide himself. Oh! Richard of Bury, I sighed,
for a sharp stone from your sling to pierce with indignant
sarcasm the mental armour of these College dullards.
Happily, things are altered now, and the disgrace of such neglect no longer
hangs on the College. Let us hope, in these days of revived respect
for antiquity, no other College library is in a similar plight.
Not Englishmen alone are guilty, however, of such unloving treatment
of their bibliographical treasures. The following is translated
from an interesting work just published in Paris,[1] and shows how,
even at this very time, and in the centre of the literary activity
of France, books meet their fate.
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