| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: must die to-morrow perhaps, or twenty years hence."
Then there was her humour, which was part of her strange wisdom,
and was always awake and on the watch. In all her letters,
written in exquisite English prose, but with an ardent imagery
and a vehement sincerity of emotion which make them, like the
poems, indeed almost more directly, un-English, Oriental, there
was always this intellectual, critical sense of humour, which
could laugh at one's own enthusiasm as frankly as that enthusiasm
had been set down. And partly the humour, like the delicate
reserve of her manner, was a mask or a shelter. "I have taught
myself," she writes to me from India, "to be commonplace and like
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: Oh it was always as if there were so much to say!
"I don't know why it shouldn't make me--humanly, which is what
we're speaking of--as right as it makes you."
"I see," Marcher returned. "'Humanly,' no doubt, as showing that
you're living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my
secret."
May Bartram smiled. "I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not
living for you. It's my intimacy with you that's in question."
He laughed as he saw what she meant. "Yes, but since, as you say,
I'm only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you're--aren't you?
no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: couldn' resis'. De widder she try to git her to say
she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'.
I lit out mighty quick, I tell you.
"I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a
skift 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz
people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de ole tumble-down
cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go
'way. Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody
roun' all de time. 'Long 'bout six in de mawnin'
skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every
skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
