| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: or blood-drinking pretas... Anyhow the malevolence of the Culex fasciatus
would justify the suspicion that some wicked human soul had been compressed
into that wailing speck of a body...
Now, to return to the subject of kerosene-oil, you can exterminate the
mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all stagnant
water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe; and the adult
females perish when they approach the water to launch their rafts of eggs.
And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual cost of freeing from
mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand inhabitants, does not exceed
three hundred dollars!...
I wonder what would be said if the city-government of Tokyo -- which is
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: fate of kingdoms depended on them; and they were usually attended
with a humble audience of young students from the inns of courts,
or the universities, who, at due distance, listened to these
oracles, and returned home with great contempt for their law and
philosophy, their heads filled with trash under the name of
politeness, criticism, and belles lettres.
By these means the poets, for many years past, were all overrun
with pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used;
because pedantry is the too front or unseasonable obtruding our own
knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon
it; by which definition men of the court or the army may be as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: hypocrisy, and did not mortify the lust for sins [flames of
sin]; for they had to grieve, while they would rather have
continued to sin, if it had been free to them.
As regards confession, the procedure was this: Every one had
[was enjoined] to enumerate all his sins (which is an
impossible thing). This was a great torment. From such as he
had forgotten [But if any one had forgotten some sins] he
would be absolved on the condition that, if they would occur
to him, he must still confess them. In this way he could never
know whether he had made a sufficiently pure confession
[perfectly and correctly], or when confessing would ever have
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