| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: even then, that the salon was one of those rare curiosities which
seem, when you come to think of them afterwards, to lie just on the
borderland between reality and dreams, so that you can scarcely tell
to which side they most belong.
"The room, the ancient Hall of Audience, stood above a row of cellars
with grated air-holes, once the prison cells of the old court-house,
now converted into a kitchen. I do not know that the magnificent lofty
chimney-piece of the Louvre, with its marvelous carving, seemed more
wonderful to me than the vast open hearth of the salon d'Esgrignon
when I saw it for the first time. It was covered like a melon with a
network of tracery. Over it stood an equestrian portrait of Henri
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: say: 'I saw a wide field, and in it were two fair beasts. Wide was the
field about them and rich was the earth with sweet scented herbs, and so
abundant was the pasturage that hardly might they consume all that grew
about them: and the two were like one to another, for they were the sons
of one mother. And as I looked, I saw, far off to the northward, a speck
within the sky, so small it was, and so high it was, that the eye scarce
might mark it. Then it came nearer and hovered over the spot where the two
beasts fed:--and its neck was bare, and its beak was hooked, and its talons
were long, and its wings strong. And it hovered over the field where the
two beasts were; and I saw it settle down upon a great white stone; and it
waited. And I saw more specks to the northward, and more and more came
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: He had seven coats on when he came,
With three pairs of boots--but the worst of it was,
He had wholly forgotten his name.
He would answer to "Hi!" or to any loud cry,
Such as "Fry me!" or "Fritter my wig!"
To "What-you-may-call-um!" or "What-was-his-name!"
But especially "Thing-um-a-jig!"
While, for those who preferred a more forcible word,
He had different names from these:
His intimate friends called him "Candle-ends,"
And his enemies "Toasted-cheese."
The Hunting of the Snark |
