| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the
needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-
flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of-
honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of
the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is
asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river
water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you
not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened
to this pedestal and I cannot move."
"I am waited for in Egypt," said the Swallow. "My friends are
flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into
a little garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one
by one into a tool or hen house (I was but a tender little thing
just put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether the
house was for tools or hens), and in that house to put our hands
into a sack which stood on a bench, a candle burning beside it. I
put my hand into the sack. My hand came out quite black. I went
and joined the other boys in the schoolroom; and all their hands
were black too.
By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, I hope,
will be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hundred and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: or of savages. What we had been forced to admit, with growing
acquaintance, was that they were ignorant as Plato and Aristotle
were, but with a highly developed mentality quite comparable
to that of Ancient Greece.
Far be it from me to lumber these pages with an account of
what we so imperfectly strove to teach them. The memorable fact
is what they taught us, or some faint glimpse of it. And at
present, our major interest was not at all in the subject matter of
our talk, but in the audience.
Girls--hundreds of them--eager, bright-eyed, attentive
young faces; crowding questions, and, I regret to say, an
Herland |
