| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: they are every one bibles or prayer-books. Now one cannot read
many hundred bibles. . . . As for the motion of the ship it is not
very much, but 'twill suffice. Thomson shook hands and wished me
well. I DO like Thomson. . . . Tell Austin that the GREAT EASTERN
has six masts and four funnels. When I get back I will make a
little model of her for all the chicks and pay out cotton reels. .
. . Here we are at 4.20 at Brest. We leave probably to-morrow
morning.
'JULY 12. GREAT EASTERN. - Here as I write we run our last course
for the buoy at the St. Pierre shore end. It blows and lightens,
and our good ship rolls, and buoys are hard to find; but we must
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were
indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more
congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming
out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and
coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I
experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the
hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light,
seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong
desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that
though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed
the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: Meno.)
YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?
STRANGER: How does man walk, but as a diameter whose power is two feet?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so.
STRANGER: And the power of the remaining kind, being the power of twice
two feet, may be said to be the diameter of our diameter.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; and now I think that I pretty nearly understand
you.
STRANGER: In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make another
famous jest.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
Statesman |
