| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: its passage. Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of
railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs
so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart
becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country;
and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain of
carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at
unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley
that leads toward the town; they are left behind with the
signalman as, shading his eyes with his hand, he watches the
long train sweep away into the golden distance.
Moreover, there is still before the invalid the shock of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: though the sands of life were fast ebbing out; and that in a few
hours more I shall be `where the wicked cease from troubling, and
the weary are at rest.' If it were not for leaving you, Katy, I
could wish to bid farewell to earth, and go up to my eternal
home, even on this bright, beautiful Christmas day."
"O mother!" sobbed Katy, unable any longer to restrain the
expression of her emotion.
"Do not weep, my child; I may be mistaken; yet I feel as though
God was about to end my sufferings on earth, and I am willing to
go."
"O, no, mother! It cannot be!" exclaimed Katy, gazing earnestly,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI"
THE COMRADE
ENVOI
PROEM
"SO LET THEM PASS, THESE SONGS OF MINE"
So let them pass, these songs of mine,
Into oblivion, nor repine;
Abandoned ruins of large schemes,
Dimmed lights adrift from nobler dreams,
Weak wings I sped on quests divine,
So let them pass, these songs of mine.
|
