| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: ha!--interlarding the melancholy tale with so many
doleful shakes of the head, and more doleful "Ah!
who would have thought it! so amiable, so prudent
a young lady, as we all thought her, what a mon-
strous pity! well, I have nothing to charge myself
with; I acted the part of a friend, I warned her of
the principles of that rake, I told her what would be
the consequence; I told her so, I told her so."--Ha,
ha, ha!
LETITIA
Ha, ha, ha! Well, but, Charlotte, you don't tell
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: nothing to trouble him. Ion is confident that Socrates would never think
him mad if he could only hear his embellishments of Homer. Socrates asks
whether he can speak well about everything in Homer. 'Yes, indeed he can.'
'What about things of which he has no knowledge?' Ion answers that he can
interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins Socrates, when Homer speaks of
the arts, as for example, of chariot-driving, or of medicine, or of
prophecy, or of navigation--will he, or will the charioteer or physician or
prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled to admit that every
man will judge of his own particular art better than the rhapsode. He
still maintains, however, that he understands the art of the general as
well as any one. 'Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
for colours and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed
with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him
mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear
and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it
|