| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: forgiveness of what I can assure you to have been
perfectly unintentional. I shall never reflect on
my former acquaintance with your family in Devonshire
without the most grateful pleasure, and flatter
myself it will not be broken by any mistake or
misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your
whole family is very sincere; but if I have been so
unfortunate as to give rise to a belief of more than
I felt, or meant to express, I shall reproach myself
for not having been more guarded in my professions
of that esteem. That I should ever have meant more
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: and can look forward as they go to relief, to recreation, and to
rest. But Damien shut-to with his own hand the doors of his own
sepulchre.
I shall now extract three passages from my diary at Kalawao.
A. "Damien is dead and already somewhat ungratefully remembered in
the field of his labours and sufferings. 'He was a good man, but
very officious,' says one. Another tells me he had fallen (as
other priests so easily do) into something of the ways and habits
of thought of a Kanaka; but he had the wit to recognise the fact,
and the good sense to laugh at" [over] "it. A plain man it seems
he was; I cannot find he was a popular."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: no necessity to be amiable. He was sure to get his
own extortionate terms out of me for towage
whether he frowned or smiled. As a matter of fact,
he did neither: but before many days elapsed he
managed to astonish me not a little and to set
Schomberg's tongue clacking more than ever.
It came about in this way. There was a shallow
bar at the mouth of the river which ought to have
been kept down, but the authorities of the State
were piously busy gilding afresh the great Buddhist
Pagoda just then, and I suppose had no money to
Falk |
