| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: them can talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a nineteenth-
century painter is naturally of great importance. If they are
allowed, they chatter a great deal, but they never say anything.
Their observations are the only BANALITES heard in Bohemia.
However, though they cannot appreciate the artist as artist, they
are quite ready to appreciate the artist as a man. They are very
sensitive to kindness, respect and generosity. A beautiful model
who had sat for two years to one of our most distinguished English
painters, got engaged to a street vendor of penny ices.
On her marriage the painter sent her a pretty wedding present, and
received in return a nice letter of thanks with the following
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: some invisible angel has been attracted by the simplicity and
good faith with which our children set about their undertaking?
May he not have spent an hour of his immorttality in playing with
those dear little souls? and so the result is what we call a
miracle. No, no! Do not laugh at me; I see what a foolish thought
it is!"
"My dear wife," replied the husband, laughing heartily, "you are
as much a child as Violet and Peony."
And in one sense so she was, for all through life she had kept
her heart full of childlike simplicity and faith, which was as
pure and clear as crystal; and, looking at all matters through
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: upon the hill-top with his team. But there was the paddle in my
hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words
inscribed: 'He clung to his paddle.'
The CIGARETTE had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at
the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther
side. He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was
then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream
after the truant ARETHUSA. The stream was too rapid for a man to
mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled
along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the
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