| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: answer to Why did we go out is, "Because we chose to take a walk."
Now when we talk about other things beside ourselves, we must
remember this same difference between How and Why. If I ask you,
"Why does fire burn you?" you would answer, I suppose, being a
little boy, "Because it is hot;" which is all you know about it.
But if you were a great chemist, instead of a little boy, you
would be apt to answer me, I am afraid, "Fire burns because the
vibratory motion of the molecules of the heated substance
communicates itself to the molecules of my skin, and so destroys
their tissue;" which is, I dare say, quite true: but it only
tells us how fire burns, the way or means by which it burns; it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: O 't is old Dame Jeannette that kept the hall,
I knew she would die at the autumn fall.
Dame Jeannette had not that gold-brown hair,
Old Jeannette was not a maiden fair.
O 't is none of our kith and none of our kin,
(Her soul may our Lady assoil from sin!)
But I hear the boy's voice chaunting sweet,
'Elle est morte, la Marguerite.'
Come in, my son, and lie on the bed,
And let the dead folk bury their dead.
O mother, you know I loved her true:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: must take a walk. It is imperative that I free my spirit in the open air
for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station and
back?"
"Very well, then, knock on my door when you're ready."
Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.
"What a night!" she said. "Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands
in the stars...I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable--not only
am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers,
especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself--some
resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own
hands in a dark mirror."
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