| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: that is at about four hundred and twenty miles from Eka-
terenburg. There they intended to be guided by circum-
stances as to their route across the invaded country, either
together or separately, according as their news-hunting in-
stinct set them on one track or another.
This road from Ekaterenburg to Ichim -- which passes
through Irkutsk -- was the only one which Michael could
take. But, as he did not run after news, and wished, on
the contrary, to avoid the country devastated by the in-
vaders, he determined to stop nowhere.
"I am very happy to make part of my journey in your
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be
seen only by those who are on a level with them.
* * * * *
I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of
view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of
observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been
his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days
together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he
is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of
his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: he saw--" and then it suddenly went off into a song:--
"He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realise,' he said,
"The bitterness of Life!'"
And what a wild being it was who sang these wild words! A Gardener he
seemed to be yet surely a mad one, by the way he brandished his
rake--madder, by the way he broke, ever and anon, into a frantic
jig--maddest of all, by the shriek in which he brought out the last
Sylvie and Bruno |
