The Station: Travels to the Holy Mountain of Greece

Letters from foreign countries arrive in the afternoon. Each envelope advertises a break in the monotony of days; each reveals on penetration only one more facet of a standard world. But latterly another kind has come, strangely addressed, stranger still within. ldquo;We learn,rdquo; runs one, ldquo;that you are safely returned to your own glorious country and are already in the midst of your dearest ones, enjoying the best of health...PS.mdash; We have experienced no cold this year hitherto.rdquo; ldquo;I am proud,rdquo; says another, ldquo;that the all-bountiful God has allowed us to see you again...May he guard you from all evil, world without end. Send me from England ten metres of black stuff that I may make a gown.rdquo; As the unfamiliar hieroglyphics resolve, memory evokes the senders, their fellows, and the weeks of their company. Till the whole excursion into their impalpable world stands defined as the limits of a sleep. But the experience, being personal, is framed in a larger retrospect. The colour of their environment lives by contrast with my own. Without that measure, its romance fades away.