| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: most remarkable instance of Spider industry; to treat it as it
should be treated, that is to say, with the whole armoury of
scientific formulae, would be out of place in these modest pages.
Let us take a middle course, avoiding both abstruse truths and
complete ignorance.
Let us direct our attention to the nets of the Epeirae, preferably
to those of the Silky Epeira and the Banded Epeira, so plentiful in
the autumn, in my part of the country, and so remarkable for their
bulk. We shall first observe that the radii are equally spaced;
the angles formed by each consecutive pair are of perceptibly equal
value; and this in spite of their number, which in the case of the
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: -- without heads!
For one instant he stood bewildered,-- imagining a crime. But in another
moment he perceived that there was no blood, and that the headless necks
did not look as if they had been cut. Then he thought to himself:-- "Either
this is an illusion made by goblins, or I have been lured into the dwelling
of a Rokuro-Kubi... (4) In the book Soshinki (5) it is written that if one
find the body of a Rokuro-Kubi without its head, and remove the body to
another place, the head will never be able to join itself again to the
neck. And the book further says that when the head comes back and finds
that its body has been moved, it will strike itself upon the floor three
times,-- bounding like a ball,-- and will pant as in great fear, and
Kwaidan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: I'll write unto them, and entreat them fair.--
Come, cousin, you shall be the messenger.
EXETER.
And I, I hope, shall reconcile them all.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. Sandal Castle
[Enter EDWARD, RICHARD, and MONTAGUE.]
RICHARD.
Brother, though I be youngest, give me leave.
EDWARD.
No; I can better play the orator.
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