| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military,
and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist,
that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers
had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and
leave their houses.
I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have
said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to
refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half
past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening
paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very
inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson,
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One
exhausts what they have to say in a very short time, and then they
become as tedious as one's relations. I am very fond of the work
of many of the Impressionist painters of Paris and London.
Subtlety and distinction have not yet left the school. Some of
their arrangements and harmonies serve to remind one of the
unapproachable beauty of Gautier's immortal SYMPHONIE EN BLANC
MAJEUR, that flawless masterpiece of colour and music which may
have suggested the type as well as the titles of many of their best
pictures. For a class that welcomes the incompetent with
sympathetic eagerness, and that confuses the bizarre with the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: but little importance to the Messianic expectations of the
Pharisees, and mingled scarcely at all in national politics. They
lived for the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the
legitimate predecessors of the early Christian hermits and monks.
But while pre-eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule
upon the entire sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the
Pharisees as hypocrites, and insisted upon charity toward all men
instead of the old Jewish exclusiveness.
It was once a favourite theory that both John the Baptist and
Jesus were members of the Essenian brotherhood; but that theory
is now generally abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
