| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: atmosphere of mortal cold, but showing more obvious signs of
occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestry which had faded
to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so that the young
man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn wood.
Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt
feet, and at a table in the window three persons were seated: an
elderly lady who was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl
bent above a strip of needle-work, and an old man.
As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious
of staring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed
figure, dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: light of science and true art, would not all such enactments be utterly
ridiculous?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Utterly.
STRANGER: And if he who gave laws, written or unwritten, determining what
was good or bad, honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust, to the tribes
of men who flock together in their several cities, and are governed in
accordance with them; if, I say, the wise legislator were suddenly to come
again, or another like to him, is he to be prohibited from changing them?--
would not this prohibition be in reality quite as ridiculous as the other?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: Do you know a plausible saying of the common people which is in
Statesman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: of the old palaces of Little Britain. They seem to me to keep
together, and to look down with sovereign contempt upon
their leathern-bottomed neighbors: as I have seen decayed
gentry carry a high head among the plebeian society with which
they were reduced to associate. The whole front of my sitting-
room is taken up with a bow-window, on the panes of which
are recorded the names of previous occupants for many
generations, mingled with scraps of very indifferent
gentlemanlike poetry, written in characters which I can scarcely
decipher, and which extol the charms of many a beauty of
Little Britain who has long, long since bloomed, faded, and
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