| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: least likely to be critical. I know you will be more suspicious
still; and the facts set down above were one and all collected from
the lips of Protestants who had opposed the father in his life.
Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the image of a man,
with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with rugged
honesty, generosity, and mirth.
Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides
of Damien's character, collected from the lips of those who had
laboured with and (in your own phrase) "knew the man"; - though I
question whether Damien would have said that he knew you. Take it,
and observe with wonder how well you were served by your gossips,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: [To Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer.
[To the Fool] Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you
she-foxes!
Edg. Look, where he stands and glares! Want'st thou eyes at
trial,
madam?
Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me.
Fool. Her boat hath a leak,
And she must not speak
Why she dares not come over to thee.
Edg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a
King Lear |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: on the brink of their diversions. From ten o'clock on
Sunday night, my friend heard them tuning their
instruments: and as the hour of liberty drew near, each
must have had his music open, his bow in readiness across
the fiddle, his foot already raised to mark the time, and
his nerves braced for execution; for hardly had the
twelfth stroke. sounded from the earliest steeple, before
they had launced forth into a secular bravura.
Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all house-
holds. For weeks before the great morning, confectioners
display stacks of Scotch bun - a dense, black substance,
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