| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: "A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he
ain't a bird, strickly speakin' --"
"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"
"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's
only jist a' animal. No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther,
he ain't big enough for a' animal. He mus' be a bug.
Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."
"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second
place?"
"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes
a long ways, but a flea don't."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: selling he did not give a copper farthing for its merit. It
must not be supposed that the person to whom this answer was
addressed received it as a profession of faith; he knew, on
the other hand, that it was only a whiff of irritation; just
as we know, when a respectable writer talks of literature as
a way of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is
only debating one aspect of a question, and is still clearly
conscious of a dozen others more important in themselves and
more central to the matter in hand. But while those who
treat literature in this penny-wise and virtue-foolish spirit
are themselves truly in possession of a better light, it does
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Against this preference shown the sketch it may be urged that to
appreciate such suggestions presupposes as much art in the public as
in the painter. But the ability to appreciate a thing when
expressed is but half that necessary to express it. Some
understanding must exist in the observer for any work to be
intelligible. It is only a question of degree. The greater the
art-sense in the person addressed, the more had better be left to it.
Now in Japan the public is singularly artistic. In fact, the
artistic appreciation of the masses there is something astonishing
to us, accustomed to our immense intellectual differences between
man and man. Sketches are thus peculiarly fitting to such a land.
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