| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: of the lakes of Ruidera; which will be of use to me for the Spanish
Ovid that I have in hand; the third, to have discovered the
antiquity of cards, that they were in use at least in the time of
Charlemagne, as may be inferred from the words you say Durandarte
uttered when, at the end of that long spell while Montesinos was
talking to him, he woke up and said, 'Patience and shuffle.' This
phrase and expression he could not have learned while he was
enchanted, but only before he had become so, in France, and in the
time of the aforesaid emperor Charlemagne. And this demonstration is
just the thing for me for that other book I am writing, the
'Supplement to Polydore Vergil on the Invention of Antiquities;' for I
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: physical life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and the
fire is the measure of it.
About this time of life, if food is plenty where you live, - for
that, you know, regulates matrimony, - you may be expecting to find
yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic
felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as
among the not remotely possible events.
I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson wrote to Thrale,
telling her about life's declining from THIRTY-FIVE; the furnace is
in full blast for ten years longer, as I have said. The Romans
came very near the mark; their age of enlistment reached from
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from the
indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat;
the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at
length they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a
sitting posture, the first object that greeted their vision
was the box reposing uninjured in its corner, but still
leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
'Oh, poor Zero!' cried the girl, with a strange sobbing
laugh. 'Alas, poor Zero! This will break his heart!'
THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (CONCLUDED)
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