| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: then Lucy gave a discontented little sigh. "There's another
tiresome piece of superstition," she exclaimed; "by far the
handsomest piece of furniture in the house stuck away here in a
bedroom which is hardly ever used. Again and again have I asked
George to let me have it moved downstairs, but he won't hear of
it."
"Was it not placed here by Dame Alice herself?" I inquired a little
reproachfully, for I felt that Lucy was not treating the cabinet
with the respect which it really deserved.
"Yes, so they say," she answered; and the tone of light contempt in
which she spoke was now pierced by a not unnatural pride in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the
writer was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India
in 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think,
almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to have
an individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to be
published. The writer hesitated. "Your letter made me very
proud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it possible that I have
written verses that are 'filled with beauty,' and is it possible
that you really think them worthy of being given to the world?
You know how high my ideal of Art is; and to me my poor casual
little poems seem to be less than beautiful--I mean with that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: being robbed of what he earns, how long do you think he will carry
the capitalistic system on his back? From the beginning of the
world we have tried it. With what result? An injustice that is
staggering, a waste that is appalling, an inhumanity that is
deadening."
Jeff let a hand fall lightly on his shoulder. "Of course it's all
wrong. We know that. But can you show me how to make it right,
except out of the hearts of men growing slowly wiser and better?"
"Why slowly?" demanded Marchant. "Why not to-day while we're still
alive to see the smiles of men and women and children made glad?
You always want to begin at the wrong end. I tell you that you
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