| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards
and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail
the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas,
her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black
speck.
Once more. A race in the Pacific:
Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the
point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under
our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys
spring into the rigging of the CALIFORNIA; then they were all
furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: to our departure linger in my memory. One verse began -
Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
And ended somewhat thus -
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the folks are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
I could never be a judge of the merit of these verses; they were so
hallowed by the melancholy of the air, and were sung (or rather
"soothed") to me by a master-singer at a time so fitting. He
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: established--at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo,
which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the
hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land,
through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that
were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve--a rough road, long
and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers
gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each
morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey
ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too,
with a name like music--El Camino Real. Like music also were the names of
the missions--San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey de Francia, San Miguel,
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