| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: there a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match
with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had been in
danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at Saint
Germain's; here one who had taken arms for William at the
Revolution; and there a third that had thrown his weight
alternately into the scale of Whig and Tory.
While lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's
ear, "against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle
of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and
assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear,
as his eyes were suddenly caught and riveted by a portrait of an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "She has had an education--tres-superieure! Nothing was spared.
Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil
at twelve francs. I didn't look at the francs then.
She's an artiste, ah!"
"Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?" asked Newman.
"Reverses? Oh, sir, misfortunes--terrible."
"Unsuccessful in business, eh?"
"Very unsuccessful, sir."
"Oh, never fear, you'll get on your legs again," said Newman cheerily.
The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression
of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry. Such is Human
Perversity.
This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard works in that
poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a
portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.
For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your
mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say
first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so
little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious;" if they turn, by even
a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming;" but if you
have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious."
The Hunting of the Snark |
