| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: be good. I kiss you.
L. T.
Dear Friend Ilyá:
There is always somebody or something that prevents me from
answering your two letters, which are important and dear to me,
especially the last. First it was Baturlín, then
bad health, insomnia, then the arrival of D----, the friend of
H---- that I wrote you about. He is sitting at tea talking to the
ladies, neither understanding the other; so I left them, and want
to write what little I can of all that I think about you.
Even supposing that S---- A---- demands too much of you,¹
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: 820
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.
Whereat amaz'd, as one that unaware
Hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood, 824
Or 'stonish'd as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood;
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way. 828
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: alone, the army letting loose the grand yell, and she skipped from
the horse the same as if he had been standing still, and made her
bow, and everybody crowded around to congratulate, and they gave
her the bugle, and she put it to her lips and blew 'boots and
saddles' to see how it would go, and BB was as proud as you can't
think! And he said, 'Take Soldier Boy, and don't pass him back
till I ask for him!' and I can tell you he wouldn't have said that
to any other person on this planet. That was two months and more
ago, and nobody has been on my back since but the Corporal-General
Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, U.S.A.,
- on whom be peace!"
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