| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: air of funereal solemnity. 'I shall particularly expect Mr
Whish,' he continued. 'Mr Whish, I trust you understand the
invitation?'
'I believe you, my boy!' replied the genial Huish.
'That is right then; and quite understood, is it not?' said
Attwater. 'Mr Whish and Captain Brown at six-thirty without
fault--and you, Hay, at four sharp.'
And he called his boat.
During all this talk, a load of thought or anxiety had weighed
upon the captain. There was no part for which nature had so
liberally endowed him as that of the genial ship captain. But
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: where the lunacy of angling may be seen in its incurable stage.
There is a cosy little inn, called a camp, at the foot of a big
lake. In front of the inn is a huge dam of gray stone, over which
the river plunges into a great oval pool, where the trout assemble
in the early fall to perpetuate their race. From the tenth of
September to the thirtieth, there is not an hour of the day or night
when there are no boats floating on that pool, and no anglers
trailing the fly across its waters. Before the late fishermen are
ready to come in at midnight, the early fishermen may be seen
creeping down to the shore with lanterns in order to begin before
cock-crow. The number of fish taken is not large,--perhaps five or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere
Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this
old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her
die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on
his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's
tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most
offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he
ought to return thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his
pupil in 1811. Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the
priest chose, in a family council, one of those honest dullards,
picked out by him through the windows of his confessional, and charged
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
