| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: that burst simultaneously from the lips of our Wakwafi followers,
who are, as I think I have said, themselves bastard Masai.
And what a figure he presented as he stood there in his savage
war-gear! Accustomed as I have been to savages all my life,
I do not think that I have ever before seen anything quite so
ferocious or awe-inspiring. To begin with, the man was enormously
tall, quite as tall as Umslopogaas, I should say, and beautifully,
though somewhat slightly, shaped; but with the face of a devil.
In his right hand he held a spear about five and a half feet
long, the blade being two and a half feet in length, by nearly
three inches in width, and having an iron spike at the end of
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and
ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original purity and power
of which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love;
that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of honourable
life, assumes the subjection of the young knight to the command--
should it even be the command in caprice--of his lady. It assumes
this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse
of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to
its lady: that where that true faith and captivity are not, all
wayward and wicked passion must be; and that in this rapturous
obedience to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: certain parts of Zu-Vendis that sunrise is at hand -- hundreds
of little spiders pendant on the end of long tough webs were
floating about in it. These early-rising creatures, or rather
their webs, caught upon the horse's and our own forms by scores,
and, as we had neither the time nor the energy to brush them
off, we rushed along covered with hundreds of long grey threads
that streamed out a yard or more behind us -- and a very strange
appearance they must have given us.
And now before us are the huge brazen gates of the outer wall
of the Frowning City, and a new and horrible doubt strikes me:
What if they will not let us in?
Allan Quatermain |
