| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her
dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. Nothing could be
more natural than these two passions at cross-purposes, born in the
silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood.
The mute and constant looks which made the young people's eyes meet by
sheer need of change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered
peace, was sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love.
The habit of seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our
reading there the qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its
defects.
"At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with rugged
honesty, generosity, and mirth.
Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides
of Damien's character, collected from the lips of those who had
laboured with and (in your own phrase) "knew the man"; - though I
question whether Damien would have said that he knew you. Take it,
and observe with wonder how well you were served by your gossips,
how ill by your intelligence and sympathy; in how many points of
fact we are at one, and how widely our appreciations vary. There
is something wrong here; either with you or me. It is possible,
for instance, that you, who seem to have so many ears in Kalawao,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: damsel of rank. Suddenly he addressed her with a poem -- which was also a
question -- inspired by the delight in his heart:--
"Tadzunetsuru,
Hana ka tote koso,
Hi wo kurase,
Akenu ni otoru
Akane sasuran?"
["Being on my way to pay a visit, I found that which I took to be a
flower: therefore here I spend the day... Why, in the time before dawn, the
dawn-blush tint should glow -- that, indeed, I know not."] [2]
Without a moment's hesitation, she answered him in these verses:--
Kwaidan |
