| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: must understand I have been very seedy indeed, quite a dead body;
and unless the voyage does miracles, I shall have to draw it dam
fine. Alas, 'The Canoe Speaks' is now out of date; it will figure
in my volume of verses now imminent. However, I may find some
inspiration some day. - Till very soon, yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
BOURNEMOUTH, AUGUST 19TH, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - I promise you the paper-knife shall go to
sea with me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it
should return with me too. All that you say, I thank you for very
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: butts, or in the tilt-yard; and my Lady Bath (who confessed that
there was no use in bringing out her daughters where Rose Salterne
was in the way) prophesied in her classical fashion that Rose's
wedding bid fair to be a very bridal of Atalanta, and feast of the
Lapithae; and poor Mr. Will Cary (who always blurted out the
truth), when old Salterne once asked him angrily in Bideford
Market, "What a plague business had he making sheep's eyes at his
daughter?" broke out before all bystanders, "And what a plague
business had you, old boy, to throw such an apple of discord into
our merry meetings hereabouts? If you choose to have such a
daughter, you must take the consequences, and be hanged to you."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: thought that he was only twenty-six, and that if in five or ten
years he could break away from here and get to Moscow, even then
it would not be too late and he would still have a whole life
before him. And as he sank into unconsciousness, as his thoughts
began to be confused, he imagined the long corridor of the court
at Moscow, himself delivering a speech, his sisters, the
orchestra which for some reason kept droning: "Oo-oo-oo-oo!
Oo-oooo-oo!"
"Booh! Trah!" sounded again. "Booh!"
And he suddenly recalled how one day, when he was talking to the
bookkeeper in the little office of the Rural Board, a thin, pale
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
