| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: in pointing to this really very noble trait of my esteemed
correspondent, as I fear I may have wounded him immediately before.
I have refrained from comments on any of his extraordinary and (in
my eyes) immoral opinions, for I know him to be jealous of respect.
But his version of the quarrel is really more than I can reproduce;
for I knew the Master myself, and a man more insusceptible of fear
is not conceivable. I regret this oversight of the Chevalier's,
and all the more because the tenor of his narrative (set aside a
few flourishes) strikes me as highly ingenuous.
CHAPTER IV. - PERSECUTIONS ENDURED BY MR. HENRY.
You can guess on what part of his adventures the Colonel
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: "Ah!" said Mr. Wilding regretfully. "Now you become offensive."
"I mean to be," said Blake.
"You astonish me!"
"You lie! I don't," Sir Rowland answered him in triumph. He had got it
out at last.
Mr. Wilding sat back in his chair, and looked at him, his face
inexpressibly shocked.
"Will you of your own accord deprive us of your company, Sir Rowland,"
he wondered, "or shall Mr. Trenchard throw you after your hat?"
"Do you mean.. ." gasped the other, "that you'll ask no satisfaction
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: still early spring, and the leaves were tiny. On the top of a
small sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a veery. I could
see the pointed spots upon his breast, the swelling of his white
throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured his whole heart
into a long liquid chant, the clear notes rising and falling,
echoing and interlacing in endless curves of sound,
"Orb within orb, intricate, wonderful."
Other bird-songs can be translated into words, but not this. There
is no interpretation. It is music,--as Sidney Lanier defines it,--
"Love in search of a word."
But it is not only to the real life of birds and flowers that the
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