| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: ancestors descends untarnished to your son, and their empire
undiminished! yours is the power,--yours the responsibility--and
yours the chief interests!' I can imagine the Empress Dowager
taking this line with the Prince, and, inasmuch as various
ministers who had been very anti-foreign before entering the
yamen had turned round and behaved very sensibly afterwards, I
felt sure that responsibility and actual personal dealings with
foreigners would be a good experience and a useful education for
this Prince, and that he would eventually be one of the sturdiest
supporters of progress and good relations."
IV
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: connexion of the family, setting forth how in virtue of this relationship
he was hospitably received by an ancestor of Lysis; this ancestor was
himself begotten of Zeus by the daughter of the founder of the deme. And
these are the sort of old wives' tales which he sings and recites to us,
and we are obliged to listen to him.
When I heard this, I said: O ridiculous Hippothales! how can you be making
and singing hymns in honour of yourself before you have won?
But my songs and verses, he said, are not in honour of myself, Socrates.
You think not? I said.
Nay, but what do you think? he replied.
Most assuredly, I said, those songs are all in your own honour; for if you
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: were met at the yard gate (for this place was like a well-doing
farm) by a tall, handsome man of more than fifty, who cried out
to Alan in the Gaelic.
"James Stewart," said Alan, "I will ask ye to speak in Scotch,
for here is a young gentleman with me that has nane of the other.
This is him," he added, putting his arm through mine, "a young
gentleman of the Lowlands, and a laird in his country too, but I
am thinking it will be the better for his health if we give his
name the go-by."
James of the Glens turned to me for a moment, and greeted me
courteously enough; the next he had turned to Alan.
Kidnapped |
