| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: if I could take a little curacoa myself, but on second thoughts
called for brandy. It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed
the waiter's eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition;
made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain;
and became aware - as by a revelation - of the fool's part I had
been playing. For I had now managed to put my identification
beyond a doubt, if Alain should choose to make his inquiries at
Aylesbury; and, as if that were not enough, I had added, at an
expense of seventy pounds, a clue by which he might follow me
through the length and breadth of England, in the shape of the
claret-coloured chaise! That elegant equipage (which I began to
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: eighteenth century, full of attraction, and much that I don't yet
know as to his work. Burns, the sentimental side that there is in
most Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his poems were
his personally, and how far national, the question of the framework
of society in Scotland, and its fatal effect upon the finest
natures. Scott again, the ever delightful man, sane, courageous,
admirable; the birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a sunset;
snobbery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and notably in
that of his own land. VOILA, MADAME, LE MENU. COMMENT LE TROUVEZ-
VOUS? IL Y A DE LA BONNE VIANDO, SI ON PARVIENT A LA CUIRE
CONVENABLEMENT.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter
of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or
rejection of the Shakespeares and the Author Ortons and the Mrs.
Eddys. We get them all at second hand, we reason none of them
out for ourselves. It is the way we are made. It is the way we
are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. And
whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to
believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from
examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong,
that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our
devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of
What is Man? |
