| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night
and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most
horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went
the rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom,
where there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take.
But I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed.
In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back upon my resistance.
Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom,
without my previous experience, I should have taken at
the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed
at home to look after the place and who, availing herself
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Many suitors have you denied, my child. But here is a very
strange matter that a man should cling so to a shoe of a horse, and
it rusty; and that he should offer it like a thing on sale, and yet
not sell it; and that he should sit there seeking a wife. If I
come not to the bottom of this thing, I shall have no more pleasure
in bread; and I can see no way, but either I should hang or you
should marry him."
"By my troth, but he is bitter ugly," said the Earl's daughter.
"How if the gallows be so near at hand?"
"It was not so," said the Earl, "that my fathers did in the ancient
ages. I am like the man, and can give you neither a better reason
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our
tongue and literature I am wounded. If I had this man's fertility
and courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.
Well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was high time
SOMETHING rose to take our places. Certainly Kipling has the
gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his christening:
what will he do with them?
Goodbye, my dear James; find an hour to write to us, and register
your letter. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO RUDYARD KIPLING
|
