| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: but they have idealized my ugly face a little, which is perhaps
as well, seeing that thousands of people will probably look at
it in the centuries to come, and it is not pleasant to look at
ugly things.
Then they told me that Umslopogaas' last wish had been carried
out, and that, instead of being cremated, as I shall be, after
the usual custom here, he had been tied up, Zulu fashion, with
his knees beneath his chin, and, having been wrapped in a thin
sheet of beaten gold, entombed in a hole hollowed out of the
masonry of the semicircular space at the top of the stair he
defended so splendidly, which faces, as far as we can judge,
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: put things in order for the killing, and in such a way that we
cannot be taxed with a crime."
"It seems to me, sir, that we are in an exceedingly tight place.
Our first difficulty is to know where to begin. I never thought
this fighting an antediluvian monster would be such a complicated
job. This one is a woman, with all a woman's wit, combined with the
heartlessness of a COCOTTE. She has the strength and impregnability
of a diplodocus. We may be sure that in the fight that is before us
there will be no semblance of fair-play. Also that our unscrupulous
opponent will not betray herself!"
"That is so--but being feminine, she will probably over-reach
Lair of the White Worm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: ridiculous half-dodging of the truth; let me dismiss from my service such
a cowardly circumlocution, and squarely say that I neglected the Cowpens
during certain days which now followed. Nay, more; I totally deserted
them. Although I feel quite sure that to discover one is a real king's
descendant must bring an exultation of no mean order to the heart,
there's no exultation whatever in failing to discover this, day after
day. Mine is a nature which demands results, or at any rate signs of
results coming sooner or later. Even the most abandoned fisherman
requires a bite now and then; but my fishing for Fannings had not yet
brought me one single nibble--and I gave up the sad sport for a while.
The beautiful weather took me out of doors over the land, and also over
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