| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: but to be lawless and yet to please? The little that we know
of verse (and for my part I owe it all to my friend Professor
Fleeming Jenkin) is, however, particularly interesting in the
present connection. We have been accustomed to describe the
heroic line as five iambic feet, and to be filled with pain
and confusion whenever, as by the conscientious schoolboy, we
have heard our own description put in practice.
'All night | the dread | less an | gel un | pursued,' (2)
goes the schoolboy; but though we close our ears, we cling to
our definition, in spite of its proved and naked
insufficiency. Mr. Jenkin was not so easily pleased, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: fool I should have felt!" So we would ride on.
The horse's even pace would begin to rock us to sleep,
feeling rather bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden,
just at the moment we least expected it, right in front of us,
twenty paces away, would jump up a gray hare as if from the
bowels of the earth.
The dogs had seen it before we had, and had started forward
already in full pursuit. We began to bawl, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!"
like madmen, flogging our horses with all our might, and flying
after them.
¹The balks are the banks dividing the fields of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: told him I'd change all that once I seed yer, and when Barker
sent me over here to-day to look arter the advertisin', he said
he guessed you'd had all you wanted a' church folks. 'Jes' you
bring her along to Wakefield,' he said, 'an' tell her that her
place is waitin' for her,' and I will, too." He turned upon
Polly with sudden decision. "Why, I feel jes' like pickin' yer
up in my arms and carryin' you right off now."
"Wait, Jim!" She put one tiny hand on his arm to restrain him.
"I don't mean--not--to-day--mebbe"--he stammered, uncertainly,
"but we'll be back here a-showin' next month."
"Don't look at me now," Polly answered, as the dog-like eyes
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