| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: too self-reliant, perhaps--when I supposed, in my first missionary ardor,
that I could get on without any remembrance of the world at all. I found
that I could not. And so I have taught the old operas to my choir--such
parts of them as are within our compass and suitable for worship. And
certain of my friends still alive at home are good enough to remember this
taste of mine and to send me each year some of the new music that I should
never hear of otherwise. Then we study these things also. And although
our organ is a miserable affair, Felipe manages very cleverly to make it
do. And while the voices are singing these operas, especially the old
ones, what harm is there if sometimes the priest is thinking of something
else? So there's my confession! And now, whether Trovatore is come or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out
to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many
little delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners
desire.
I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man. It is
not indeed my character; and I had, in a comparison with my
comrades, many reasons for content. In the first place, I had no
family: I was an orphan and a bachelor; neither wife nor child
awaited me in France. In the second, I had never wholly forgot the
emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a
military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the
merry tale went the continual round and caused no
more embarrassment than it would have caused in the
best English society twelve centuries later. Practical
jokes worthy of the English wits of the first quarter of
the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and
there and yonder along the line, and compelled the
delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright
remark was made at one end of the procession and
started on its travels toward the other, you could note
its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
