| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: earth--fresh and uncontaminated."
"Do you take nothing else all day?" I cried.
"Water. And perhaps a banana if I wake in the night." She turned round
and leaned on one elbow. "You over-eat yourself dreadfully," she said;
"shamelessly! How can you expect the Flame of the Spirit to burn brightly
under layers of superfluous flesh?"
I wished she would not stare at me, and thought of going to look at my
watch again when a little girl wearing a string of coral beads joined us.
"The poor Frau Hauptmann cannot join us to-day," she said; "she has come
out in spots all over on account of her nerves. She was very excited
yesterday after having written two post-cards."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: once amusing and fortifying to the mind.
Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having
passed through Newhaven and Dieppe. They were very good
places to pass through, and I am none the less at my
destination. All my old opinions were only stages on the way
to the one I now hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to
something else. I am no more abashed at having been a red-hot
Socialist with a panacea of my own than at having been a
sucking infant. Doubtless the world is quite right in a
million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to
convince you of the fact. And in the meanwhile you must do
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: an apology on account of her daughter's health, offered her own
hand to Bucklaw as substitute for her daughter's.
But as Lady Ashton raised her head gracefully, expecting the
strain at which she was to begin the dance, she was so much
struck by an unexpected alteration in the ornaments of the
apartment that she was surprised into an exclamation, "Who has
dared to change the pictures?"
All looked up, and those who knew the usual state of the
apartment observed, with surprise, that the picture of Sir
William Ashton's father was removed from its place, and in its
stead that of old Sir Malise Ravenswood seemed to frown wrath and
The Bride of Lammermoor |
