| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil;
something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.
From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar
impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with
these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and
gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the
population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but
driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have
gone abroad, and the women curtseyed and the men louted to me by
the wayside. As I came near, I began to appreciate the roots of
this widespread respect. The look of my uncle's park wall, even
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: He assented.
And what things do we esteem good? No solemn sage is required to tell us
this, which may be easily answered; for every one will say that wealth is a
good.
Certainly, he said.
And are not health and beauty goods, and other personal gifts?
He agreed.
Can there be any doubt that good birth, and power, and honours in one's own
land, are goods?
He assented.
And what other goods are there? I said. What do you say of temperance,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: Among the stock of narratives he had in store, for every clever man
has a fund of anecdotes as Madame de la Baudraye had a collection of
phrases, the doctor chose that which is known as /La Grande Breteche/,
and is so famous indeed, that it was put on the stage at the /Gymnase-
Dramatique/ under the title of /Valentine/. So it is not necessary to
repeat it here, though it was then new to the inhabitants of the
Chateau d'Anzy. And it was told with the same finish of gesture and
tone which had won such praise for Bianchon when at Mademoiselle des
Touches' supper-party he had told it for the first time. The final
picture of the Spanish grandee, starved to death where he stood in the
cupboard walled up by Madame de Merret's husband, and that husband's
The Muse of the Department |
