| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the arts of demagogy; but none
of these arts can easily be so dishonorable or mischievous as the art
of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties are attached to the
acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds that it can no more go
to the seaside without a knowledge of the multiplication and pence
tables than it can be an astronomer without mathematics, it will learn
the multiplication table, which is more than it always does at
present, in spite of all the canings and keepings in.
The Pursuit of Learning
When the Pursuit of Learning comes to mean the pursuit of learning by
the child instead of the pursuit of the child by Learning, cane in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: I could give rare descriptions of snug junketing parties at
which I have been present; where we played at All-fours, Pope-
Joan, Tome-come-tickle-me, and other choice old games; and
where we sometimes had a good old English country dance to
the tune of Sir Roger de Coverley. Once a year, also, the
neighbors would gather together, and go on a gypsy party to
Epping Forest. It would have done any man's heart good to
see the merriment that took place here as we banqueted on the
grass under the trees. How we made the woods ring with
bursts of laughter at the songs of little Wagstaff and the merry
undertaker! After dinner, too, the young folks would play at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: des Goules, Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, the Unaussprechlichen
Kulten of von Junzt, the surviving fragments of the puzzling Book
of Eibon, and the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.
Then, too, it is undeniable that a fresh and evil wave of underground
cult activity set in about the time of my odd mutation.
In the
summer of 1913 I began to display signs of ennui and flagging
interest, and to hint to various associates that a change might
soon be expected in me. I spoke of returning memories of my earlier
life - though most auditors judged me insincere, since all the
recollections I gave were casual, and such as might have been
Shadow out of Time |
