| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: doctor and the pleadings of the chaperon. She did not see Stewart
again. But before she left, with the luggage gone and the fiacre
at the door, she went out on the terrace, and looked across to
the Villa Waldheim, rising from among its clustering trees.
Although it was too far to be certain, she thought she saw the
figure of a man on the little balcony standing with folded arms,
gazing across the valley to the Kurhaus.
Having promised to see Marie, Stewart proceeded to carry out his
promise in his direct fashion. He left Semmering the evening of
the following day, for Vienna. The strain of the confession was
over, but he was a victim of sickening dread. To one thing only
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: 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.
This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard works in that
poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a
portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.
For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your
mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say
The Hunting of the Snark |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: mattress to see if it is rock-stuffed, and you snoop into
the clothes closet; you inquire the distance to the
nearest bath room, and whether the payments are weekly or
monthly, and if there is a baby in the room next door.
Oh, there's nothing like living in a boarding-house for
cultivating the materialistic side.
But I was to find that here at Knapf's things were
quite different. Not only was Ernst von Gerhard right in
saying that it was "very German, and very, very clean;"
he recognized good copy when he saw it. Types! I never
dreamed that such faces existed outside of the old German
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