| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: insolence, her luxurious complexity. She was even later than those quite
late athletic girls, the Amazons of the links, whose big, hard football
faces stare at one from public windows and from public punts, whose
giant, manly strides take them over leagues of country and square miles
of dance-floor, and whose bursting, blatant, immodest health glares upon
sea-beaches and round supper tables. Hortense knew that even now the hour
of such is striking, and that the American boy will presently turn with
relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is a man
and that she is a woman.
But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive, when the insolence of
Eliza La Heu was not? Both these extremely feminine beings could exercise
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: But burned the workin'-plans last run wi' all I hoped to earn.
Ye know how hard an Idol dies, an' what that meant to me --
E'en tak' it for a sacrifice acceptable to Thee. . . .
~Below there! Oiler! What's your wark? Ye find it runnin' hard?
Ye needn't swill the cap wi' oil -- this isn't the Cunard!
Ye thought? Ye are not paid to think. Go, sweat that off again!~
Tck! Tck! It's deeficult to sweer nor tak' The Name in vain!
Men, ay an' women, call me stern. Wi' these to oversee
Ye'll note I've little time to burn on social repartee.
The bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro,
Till for the sake of -- well, a kiss -- I tak' 'em down below.
Verses 1889-1896 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: tropic sky; while all around, the dolphins gambolled, and the
flying-fish shot on from swell to swell, and the rainbow-hued
jellies opened and shut their cups of living crystal to the sun, as
merrily as if man had never fallen, and hell had never broken loose
on earth.
So it raged for an hour or more, till all arms were weary, and all
tongues clove to the mouth. And sick men, rotting with scurvy,
scrambled up on deck, and fought with the strength of madness; and
tiny powder-boys, handing up cartridges from the hold, laughed and
cheered as the shots ran past their ears; and old Salvation Yeo, a
text upon his lips, and a fury in his heart as of Joshua or Elijah
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