| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: work was not wasted: it is by exhausting all the hypotheses that we
reach the verifiable one; and after all, the wrong road always leads
somewhere.
Frank Harris's play was written long before mine. I read it in
manuscript before the Shakespear Memorial National Theatre was mooted;
and if there is anything except the Fitton theory (which is Tyler's
property) in my play which is also in Mr Harris's it was I who annexed
it from him and not he from me. It does not matter anyhow, because
this play of mine is a brief trifle, and full of manifest
impossibilities at that; whilst Mr Harris's play is serious both in
size, intention, and quality. But there could not in the nature of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: motionless, looking at him as one paralysed.
"Hamba! Sucka! Go!" he whispered, motioning his hand.
In an instant a gleam of intelligence shot across the face; then a wild
transport. Without a word, without a sound, as the tiger leaps when the
wild dogs are on it, with one long, smooth spring, as though unwounded and
unhurt, he turned and disappeared into the grass. It closed behind him;
but as he went the twigs and leaves cracked under his tread.
The Captain threw back the door of his tent. "Who is there?" he cried.
Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand.
The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; guns were
fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping their weapons.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence
of the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a
mob; instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar;
instead of a choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the
result? A great artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children
at a Fountain," "Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far
more to his credit if the four pictures had been exhibited in the
great Salon with the hundred good pictures of that year, than his
twenty pictures could, among three thousand others, jumbled together
in six galleries.
By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every
|
