| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: nodding pine trees - wore dwarfed into satellites by the bulk
and bearing of Mount Saint Helena. She over-towered them by
two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them by the
boldness of her profile. Her great bald summit, clear of
trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected
kinship with the dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hill-
tops.
CHAPTER II - THE PETRIFIED FOREST
WE drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the
afternoon. The sun warmed me to the heart. A broad, cool
wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: forget that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, stoops to
"twopence coloured." With crimson lake (hark to the sound of it -
crimson lake! - the horns of elf-land are not richer on the ear) -
with crimson lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be
compounded which, for cloaks especially, Titian could not equal.
The latter colour with gamboge, a hated name although an exquisite
pigment, supplied a green of such a savoury greenness that to-day
my heart regrets it. Nor can I recall without a tender weakness
the very aspect of the water where I dipped my brush. Yes, there
was pleasure in the painting. But when all was painted, it is
needless to deny it, all was spoiled. You might, indeed, set up a
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: sight of Smith's lunatic digging in Swaffer's kitch-
en garden. They had found out he could use a
spade. He dug barefooted.
"His black hair flowed over his shoulders. I
suppose it was Swaffer who had given him the
striped old cotton shirt; but he wore still the na-
tional brown cloth trousers (in which he had been
washed ashore) fitting to the leg almost like
tights; was belted with a broad leathern belt stud-
ded with little brass discs; and had never yet ven-
tured into the village. The land he looked upon
Amy Foster |
