| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: Mr. Quatermain? I expect so, and now that you are old you cannot
stop them. Well, I thank you all the same, because perhaps you
mean what you say. But what is to be done about Nombe? Hush!
here she comes. I will leave you to reason with her, if you get
the chance," and she departed in a hurry.
Nombe arrived, and something in her aspect told me that I was
going to get the chance. Her eternal smile was almost gone and
her dark, beautiful eyes flashed ominously. Still she began by
asking in a mild voice whether the lady Heddana had eaten her
supper with appetite. It will be observed that she was not
interested in my appetite or whether enough was left for Anscombe
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: palaces, or town-halls; and, in the midst of them all, a vast
temple with courts and a central dome. For here, notwithstanding
the lack of necessity, its builders seemed to have adhered to the
Over-world tradition, and had roofed their fane.
And now came the terror. All of this enormous city was dead.
Had it stood upon the moon it could not have been more dead. None
paced its streets; none looked from its window-places. None
trafficked in its markets, none worshipped in its temple. Swept,
garnished, lighted, practically untouched by the hand of Time,
here where no rains fell and no winds blew, it was yet a howling
wilderness. For what wilderness is there to equal that which once
 When the World Shook |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on
from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will
continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished
consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable
answer. I daresay, if one were a woman, one would like to
marry a man who was capable of doing this, but not quite one
who had done so. It is just a little bit abject, and somehow
just a little bit gross; and marriages in which one of the
parties has been thus battered into consent scarcely form
agreeable subjects for meditation. Love should run out to
meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of
|