| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: famous as the last. And, indeed, I am surprised myself; not at my
own devotion, but the coldness of the world. My acquaintance with
the VICOMTE began, somewhat indirectly, in the year of grace 1863,
when I had the advantage of studying certain illustrated dessert
plates in a hotel at Nice. The name of d'Artagnan in the legends I
already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year
before in a work of Miss Yonge's. My first perusal was in one of
those pirated editions that swarmed at that time out of Brussels,
and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish volumes. I understood
but little of the merits of the book; my strongest memory is of the
execution of d'Eymeric and Lyodot - a strange testimony to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: hundred cavalry ahead of their army which was following, never
expecting to find Castruccio in possession of the hill, nor were they
aware of his having seized the castle. Thus it happened that the
Florentine horsemen mounting the hill were completely taken by
surprise when they discovered the infantry of Castruccio, and so close
were they upon it they had scarcely time to pull down their visors. It
was a case of unready soldiers being attacked by ready, and they were
assailed with such vigour that with difficulty they could hold their
own, although some few of them got through. When the noise of the
fighting reached the Florentine camp below, it was filled with
confusion. The cavalry and infantry became inextricably mixed: the
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to
me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative
industry, and the flippancy with which my requests for information
are treated by a gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should
at lest have taught him the primary differences between the
Dravidian and the Berkshire variety of the genus Sus. If I am to
understand that the letter to which he refers me contains his
serious views on the acclimatization of a valuable, though possibly
uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled to believe," etc.,
etc.
There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation.
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