| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: perhaps, the most fortunate who survive a long series of such
impoverishments, till their life and influence narrow
gradually into the meagre limit of their own spirits, and
death, when he comes at last, can destroy them at one blow.
NOTE. - To this essay I must in honesty append a word or
two of qualification; for this is one of the points on which a
slightly greater age teaches us a slightly different wisdom:
A youth delights in generalities, and keeps loose from
particular obligations; he jogs on the footpath way, himself
pursuing butterflies, but courteously lending his applause to
the advance of the human species and the coming of the kingdom
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: the best of all the archers, and the Minuai crowned him with
an olive crown; and so, the songs say, the soul of good
Cyzicus was appeased and the heroes went on their way in
peace.
But when Cyzicus' wife heard that he was dead she died
likewise of grief; and her tears became a fountain of clear
water, which flows the whole year round.
Then they rowed away, the songs say, along the Mysian shore,
and past the mouth of Rhindacus, till they found a pleasant
bay, sheltered by the long ridges of Arganthus, and by high
walls of basalt rock. And there they ran the ship ashore
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: paradoxically, I was ashamed of myself for harboring him any
ill will. I realized that there was something the matter
with me, but I did not know what it was.
Matters remained thus for several days, and we continued our
journey up the Rhine. At Cologne, I had hoped to find some
reassuring indications, but there was no Cologne. And as
there had been no other cities along the river up to that
point, the devastation was infinitely greater than time
alone could have wrought. Great guns, bombs, and mines must
have leveled every building that man had raised, and then
nature, unhindered, had covered the ghastly evidence of
Lost Continent |
