| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: who has captured you in marriage, and the quickness with which
your taste in feathered head-dresses varies -- all these things
suggest touches of kinship; and you remember that in the fundamental
principles of your nature you are quite identical. As for you,
sir, who also laugh, let some man come and strike you in the
face whilst you are enjoying that marvellous-looking dish, and
we shall soon see how much of the savage there is in you.
There, I might go on for ever, but what is the good? Civilization
is only savagery silver-gilt. A vainglory is it, and like a
northern light, comes but to fade and leave the sky more dark.
Out of the soil of barbarism it has grown like a tree, and,
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: CHAPTER VII
Not many days after this, on a mild sunny morning - rather soft
under foot; for the last fall of snow was only just wasted away,
leaving yet a thin ridge, here and there, lingering on the fresh
green grass beneath the hedges; but beside them already, the young
primroses were peeping from among their moist, dark foliage, and
the lark above was singing of summer, and hope, and love, and every
heavenly thing - I was out on the hill-side, enjoying these
delights, and looking after the well-being of my young lambs and
their mothers, when, on glancing round me, I beheld three persons
ascending from the vale below. They were Eliza Millward, Fergus,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: my having had to put it together for him. He took it from me in
this form without a groan, and I gave it him quite as it came; he
took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as if
for the very purpose of learning how idiotically he was in love.
He told me I made him see things: to begin with, hadn't I first
made him see Flora Saunt? I wanted him to give her up and lucidly
informed him why; on which he never protested nor contradicted,
never was even so alembicated as to declare just for the sake of
the point that he wouldn't. He simply and pointlessly didn't, and
when at the end of three months I asked him what was the use of
talking with such a fellow his nearest approach to a justification
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