| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred
to as the author's muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme
facts or legends that I saw or heard during two months' residence
upon the island. - R. L. S.]
ENVOI
Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards;
And you in your tongue and measure, I in mine,
Our now division duly solemnise.
Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:
The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate!
You to the blinding palace-yard shall call
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: '27th, Sunday.
'This morning was a beautiful calm. We reached the buoys at about
4.30 and commenced picking up at 6.30. Shortly a new cause of
anxiety arose. Kinks came up in great quantities, about thirty in
the hour. To have a true conception of a kink, you must see one:
it is a loop drawn tight, all the wires get twisted and the gutta-
percha inside pushed out. These much diminish the value of the
cable, as they must all be cut out, the gutta-percha made good, and
the cable spliced. They arise from the cable having been badly
laid down so that it forms folds and tails at the bottom of the
sea. These kinks have another disadvantage: they weaken the cable
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: sons of the sunny South, Gazonal sprang from his lodgings to the
street, from the street to a street-cab, and drove to the rue de
Berlin to find his cousin.
Leon de Lora sent word by a servant to his cousin Gazonal that he
invited him to breakfast the next day at the Cafe de Paris, but he was
now engaged in a matter which did not allow him to receive his cousin
at the present moment. Gazonal, like a true Southerner, recounted all
his troubles to the valet.
The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too well-dressed for the
occasion (he had put on his bottle-blue coat with brass buttons, a
frilled shirt, a white waistcoat and yellow gloves), awaited his
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