| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: the canoe shot forth into clear sea, and the blue curtain
came down between the stranded and the going for help.
The Adelantado returned to us, and we waited. The weeks
crept by.
Great heat and sickness, and the Indians no longer prompt
to bring us supplies. Sooner or later, each of these dark
peoples found a Quibian or Caonabo.
The most of us determined that Diego Mendez and Fiesco
and their canoe were lost. Hispaniola knew nothing of us
--nothing, nothing! Suddenly the two Porras brothers
led a mad mutiny. ``Leave these rotting ships--seize the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: ruin!' He, in vain, endeavoured to persuade me to return with
him to Paris. I entreated him to leave me at once, lest the
police should still suspect us of an intention to attack them.
XII
The pauses and intermissions of pain become positive pleasures;
and have thus a power of shedding a satisfaction over the
intervals of ease, which few enjoyments exceed.--PALEY.
"Riding towards the cortege at a slow pace, and with a sorrowful
countenance, the guards could hardly see anything very terrific
in my approach. They seemed, however, to expect an attack. `Be
persuaded, gentlemen,' said I to them, `that I come not to wage
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it
without any touch of magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be
difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place Paquita in
a suitable setting of luxury and splendor. This horrible realism,
emphasized by gloomy poetic feeling, had inspired some passages such
as modern poetry is too free with, rather too like the flayed
anatomical figures known to artists as /ecorches/. Then, by a highly
philosophical revulsion, after describing the house of ill-fame where
the Andalusian ended her days, the writer came back to the ballad at
the opening:
Paquita now is faded, shrunk, and old,
The Muse of the Department |
