| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was holding
the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head
back and got a good long look up at that awful face.
Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing
up at the thing in a begging way, and working his lips,
but not getting anything out. I took only just a
glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:
"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"
I never see Tom look so little and like a fly;
but that was because the giant's head was so big and
awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful any
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: ourselves sharply of old wounds. Our day-dreams can no longer
lie all in the air like a story in the ARABIAN NIGHTS; they
read to us rather like the history of a period in which we
ourselves had taken part, where we come across many
unfortunate passages and find our own conduct smartly
reprimanded. And then the child, mind you, acts his parts.
He does not merely repeat them to himself; he leaps, he runs,
and sets the blood agog over all his body. And so his play
breathes him; and he no sooner assumes a passion than he gives
it vent. Alas! when we betake ourselves to our intellectual
form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: fan in the hope that you will light upon it. But this reminds me that there
is an ancient Chinese story about you, which is not pretty.
"In the time of the Emperor Genso, the Imperial Palace contained hundreds
and thousands of beautiful ladies,-- so many, indeed, that it would have
been difficult for any man to decide which among them was the loveliest.
So all of those beautiful persons were assembled together in one place; and
you were set free to fly among them; and it was decreed that the damsel
upon whose hairpin you perched should be augustly summoned to the Imperial
Chamber. In that time there could not be more than one Empress -- which was
a good law; but, because of you, the Emperor Genso did great mischief in
the land. For your mind is light and frivolous; and although among so many
Kwaidan |
