| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: a piece of their tails cut off, and the soft flap of their pretty little ears
was cut quite off. How their mother licked them, and how troubled she was,
poor thing! I never forgot it. They healed in time,
and they forgot the pain, but the nice soft flap, that of course was intended
to protect the delicate part of their ears from dust and injury,
was gone forever. Why don't they cut their own children's ears into points
to make them look sharp? Why don't they cut the end off their noses
to make them look plucky? One would be just as sensible as the other.
What right have they to torment and disfigure God's creatures?"
Sir Oliver, though he was so gentle, was a fiery old fellow,
and what he said was all so new to me, and so dreadful,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness he meant anything but
pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his thoroughness. The
'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other hands; and now we seem
to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want of exactness while
assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness, its paradoxical
explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has ever stood this
criticism of the next generation, though the founders of all of them have
imagined that they were built upon a rock. And the utilitarian system,
like others, has yielded to the inevitable analysis. Even in the opinion
of 'her admirers she has been terribly damaged' (Phil.), and is no longer
the only moral philosophy, but one among many which have contributed in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.
"Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sack
a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries?
One came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already.
Her mamma is very anxious to hear again."
"Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs.
Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he
come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?"
"In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven
years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter
Hildesmuller!--some day I shall with a big club pound that man's
Heart of the West |
