| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: beast is so large, and its nervous organization of so low a
caliber, that it took all this time for the intelligence of death
to reach and be impressed upon the minute brain. The thing was
dead when your bullets struck it; but it did not know it for
several seconds--possibly a minute. If I am not mistaken, it is
an Allosaurus of the Upper Jurassic, remains of which have been
found in Central Wyoming, in the suburbs of New York."
An Irishman by the name of Brady grinned. I afterward learned
that he had served three years on the traffic-squad of the
Chicago police force.
I had been calling Nobs in the meantime and was about to set out
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: ZANONI or (to bracket works of very different value) THE SCARLET
LETTER; and by what discrimination are you to open your doors TO
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS and close them on THE FAERY QUEEN? To bring
things closer home, I will here propound to Mr. Besant a conundrum.
A narrative called PARADISE LOST was written in English verse by
one John Milton; what was it then? It was next translated by
Chateaubriand into French prose; and what was it then? Lastly, the
French translation was, by some inspired compatriot of George
Gilfillan (and of mine) turned bodily into an English novel; and,
in the name of clearness, what was it then?
But, once more, why should we add "fictitious"? The reason why is
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: showing itself in the rude beginnings of the art? At any rate,
wherever he lay - whether in the little vineyard at the gate of the
Gothic town, or in some dim London churchyard amidst the roar and
bustle of our great city - no gorgeous monument marked his resting-
place. His true tomb, as Shakespeare saw, was the poet's verse,
his true monument the permanence of the drama. So had it been with
others whose beauty had given a new creative impulse to their age.
The ivory body of the Bithynian slave rots in the green ooze of the
Nile, and on the yellow hills of the Cerameicus is strewn the dust
of the young Athenian; but Antinous lives in sculpture, and
Charmides in philosophy.
|
