| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: volume. I myself have note-books full of just such
gorgeous language, some of the best of which I have
used elsewhere, and so will not repeat here.[4]
[4] See especially Jackson Himes in The Blazed Trail;
and TheRawhide.
This vividness manifests itself quite as often in the
selection of the apt word as in the construction of
elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention. A
cowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by
saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be
more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: The figure of the strange man rose before her--would not be dismissed.
"That was the man for me, after all is said and done--a man without a care
--who'd give me everything I want and with whom I'd always feel that sense
of life and of being in touch with the world. I never wanted to fight--it
was thrust on me. Really, there's a fount of happiness in me, that is
drying up, little by little, in this hateful existence. I'll be dead if
this goes on--and"--she stirred in the bed and flung out her arms--"I want
passion, and love, and adventure--I yearn for them. Why should I stay here
and rot?--I am rotting!" she cried, comforting herself with the sound of
her breaking voice. "But if I tell Casimir all this when he comes this
afternoon, and he says, 'Go'--as he certainly will--that's another thing I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft
her mizzen mast.
She had her berth just ahead of me, and her
name was Diana,--Diana not of Ephesus but of
Bremen. This was proclaimed in white letters a
foot long spaced widely across the stern (somewhat
like the lettering of a shop-sign) under the cottage
windows. This ridiculously unsuitable name struck
one as an impertinence towards the memory of the
most charming of goddesses; for, apart from the
fact that the old craft was physically incapable of
Falk |
