| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: should not produce a sense of chill stupor in the audience, such as
overcame her as the lines flowed on, sometimes long and sometimes
short, but always delivered with the same lilt of voice, which seemed
to nail each line firmly on to the same spot in the hearer's brain.
Still, she reflected, these sorts of skill are almost exclusively
masculine; women neither practice them nor know how to value them; and
one's husband's proficiency in this direction might legitimately
increase one's respect for him, since mystification is no bad basis
for respect. No one could doubt that William was a scholar. The
reading ended with the finish of the Act; Katharine had prepared a
little speech.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: saying his prayers. So here, sir, I take my kind leave of you until
to-morrow; and it is my prayerful wish that you may slumber like a
prince.'
And the old man, with the twentieth courteous inclination, left his
guest alone.
CHAPTER III - IN WHICH THE PRINCE COMFORTS AGE AND BEAUTY AND
DELIVERS A LECTURE ON DISCRETION IN LOVE
THE Prince was early abroad: in the time of the first chorus of
birds, of the pure and quiet air, of the slanting sunlight and the
mile-long shadows. To one who had passed a miserable night, the
freshness of that hour was tonic and reviving; to steal a march upon
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: patient; but here they were retained and guarded in the heart while the sound
persons went away. They were, namely, casts of female friends, whose bodily or
mental deformities were here most faithfully preserved.
With the snake-like writhings of an idea he glided into another female heart;
but this seemed to him like a large holy fane.* The white dove of innocence
fluttered over the altar. How gladly would he have sunk upon his knees; but he
must away to the next heart; yet he still heard the pealing tones of the
organ, and he himself seemed to have become a newer and a better man; he felt
unworthy to tread the neighboring sanctuary which a poor garret, with a sick
bed-rid mother, revealed. But God's warm sun streamed through the open window;
lovely roses nodded from the wooden flower-boxes on the roof, and two sky-blue
Fairy Tales |
