| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Had this good house, in frame or fixture,
Been tempered by the least admixture
Of that discreditable shoddy,
Should we to-day compound our toddy,
Or gaily marry song and laughter
Below its sempiternal rafter?
Not so!' the Deacon cried.
The mansion
Had marked his fatuous expansion.
The years were full, the house was fated,
The rotten structure crepitated!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: approach the altar before he had prepared the sacrifice. He quite
agreed with our friend both as to the delight and as to the honour
of the chase - he would bring down the animal with his own rifle.
When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said after
thinking: "No, I'm ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. She'd
give anything to see him; she says she requires another tip. She's
really quite morbid about it. But she must play fair - she SHAN'T
see him!" he emphatically added. I wondered if they hadn't even
quarrelled a little on the subject - a suspicion not corrected by
the way he more than once exclaimed to me: "She's quite incredibly
literary, you know - quite fantastically!" I remember his saying
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: fell back, groaning, upon his bed.
"No, no; I am here," said the monk, quickly coming back to
him. "Go on; who were those men?"
"One of them was a foreigner, English, I think. The four
others were French and wore the uniform of musketeers."
"Their names?" asked the monk.
"I don't know them, but the four other noblemen called the
Englishman `my lord.'"
"Was the woman handsome?"
"Young and beautiful. Oh, yes, especially beautiful. I see
her now, as on her knees at my feet, with her head thrown
Twenty Years After |
