| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: the first news of the rising in Warsaw all the remount
establishment, officers, vets., and the very troopers, were put
promptly under arrest and hurried off in a body beyond the
Dnieper to the nearest town in Russia proper. From there they
were dispersed to the distant parts of the Empire. On this
occasion poor Mr. Nicholas B. penetrated into Russia much farther
than he ever did in the times of Napoleonic invasion, if much
less willingly. Astrakhan was his destination. He remained
there three years, allowed to live at large in the town but
having to report himself every day at noon to the military
commandant, who used to detain him frequently for a pipe and a
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: up and down stairs, till my legs are so tired that I drop down of an
evening like a lump of lead. Here am I neglecting my poor Cibot for
you; Mlle. Remonencq cooks his victuals for him, and he goes on about
it and says that nothing is right! At that I tell him that one ought
to put up with something for the sake of other people, and that you
are so ill that I cannot leave you. In the first place, you can't
afford a nurse. And before I would have a nurse here!--I have done for
you these ten years; they want wine and sugar, and foot-warmers, and
all sorts of comforts. And they rob their patients unless the patients
leave them something in their wills. Have a nurse in here to-day, and
to-morrow we should find a picture or something or other gone--"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: I do not know which is right--perhaps both. There are different species
that go under the same name. There is a love that begins in the head, and
goes down to the heart, and grows slowly; but it lasts till death, and asks
less than it gives. There is another love, that blots out wisdom, that is
sweet with the sweetness of life and bitter with the bitterness of death,
lasting for an hour; but it is worth having lived a whole life for that
hour. I cannot tell, perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to
root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It
is a blood-red flower, with the colour of sin; but there is always the
scent of a god about it."
Gregory would have made a remark; but she said, without noticing:
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