| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: attractive, and they seemed to be well done. They were highly
prized by their owners, but I was anxious to know what the Lady
Miao thought of her ability as an artist, and so I asked:
"Do you consider the Empress Dowager a good painter?"
"The Empress Dowager is a great woman," she answered. "Of course,
as an artist, she is an amateur rather than a professional. Had
she devoted herself wholly to art, hers would have been one of
the great names among our artists. She wields her brush with a
power and precision which only genius added to practice can give.
She has a keen appreciation of art, and it is a pity that the
cares of state might not have been borne by others, leaving her
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land,
through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that
were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve--a rough road, long
and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers
gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each
morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey
ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too,
with a name like music--El Camino Real. Like music also were the names of
the missions--San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey de Francia, San Miguel,
Santa Ynes--their very list is a song.
So there, by-and-by, was our continent, with the locomotive whistling
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: it. Thus we see that there are many causes which impair the happiness of
friends.
We may expect a friendship almost divine, such as philosophers have
sometimes dreamed of: we find what is human. The good of it is
necessarily limited; it does not take the place of marriage; it affords
rather a solace than an arm of support. It had better not be based on
pecuniary obligations; these more often mar than make a friendship. It is
most likely to be permanent when the two friends are equal and independent,
or when they are engaged together in some common work or have some public
interest in common. It exists among the bad or inferior sort of men almost
as much as among the good; the bad and good, and 'the neither bad nor
Lysis |
