| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: praised because their obvious success could not be ignored; but on
their subsequent publication in book form they were violently
assailed. That nearly all of them have held the stage is still a
source of irritation among certain journalists. Salome however
enjoys a singular career. As every one knows, it was prohibited by
the Censor when in rehearsal by Madame Bernhardt at the Palace
Theatre in 1892. On its publication in 1893 it was greeted with
greater abuse than any other of Wilde's works, and was consigned to
the usual irrevocable oblivion. The accuracy of the French was
freely canvassed, and of course it is obvious that the French is not
that of a Frenchman. The play was passed for press, however, by no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: Now, this Demoiselle Gautier, it appears she lived a bit free, if
you'll excuse my saying so. Poor lady, she's dead now; there's no
more of her left than of them that no one has a word to say
against. We water them every day. Well, when the relatives of the
folk that are buried beside her found out the sort of person she
was, what do you think they said? That they would try to keep her
out from here, and that there ought to be a piece of ground
somewhere apart for these sort of women, like there is for the
poor. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I gave it to them
straight, I did: well-to-do folk who come to see their dead four
times a year, and bring their flowers themselves, and what
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: of living stone," which swarmed in the ancient seas, in vast
variety, and in such numbers that whole beds of limestone are
composed of their disjointed fragments; but which have vanished out
of our modern seas, we know not why, till, a few years since,
almost the only known living species was the exquisite and rare
Pentacrinus asteria, from deep water off the Windward Isles of the
West Indies.
Of this you will see a specimen or two both at Liverpool and in the
British Museum; and near them, probably, specimens of the new-old
Crinoids, discovered of late years by Professor Sars, Mr. Gwyn
Jeffreys, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Wyville Thomson, and the other deep-
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