| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the
Helm shall speak to no one." So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering
could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals
the ship usually sailed backwards.
As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock,
let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked
me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in
"writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the
first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard
people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry. Such is Human
Perversity.
The Hunting of the Snark |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: acceptance came. It was twenty five dollars this time, and almost made me
feel again that I could handsomely support Ethel. But not quite. After
the first charming elation at earning money with my pen, those weeks of
refusal had caused me to think more soberly. And though I was now bent
upon becoming an author and leaving Nassau Street, I burned no bridges
behind me, but merely filled my spare hours with writing and with showing
it to Ethel."
"It was now that the second area of perturbation of my life came to me. I
say the second, because the first had been the recent dawning belief that
Ethel thought about me when I was not there to remind her of myself. This
idea had stirred --but you will understand. And now, what was my proper,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that
moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his
corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was
a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he
couldn't know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to
have known that he could not prove a universal negative - I say, I
trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that the
professor answered quite sharply:
"Because there ain't."
Which was not even good English, my dear little boy; for, as you
must know from Aunt Agitate's Arguments, the professor ought to
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