| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: not acquainted with etiquette? Where have you come from? Don't you
know how such matters are managed? You should first have entered a
complaint about this at the court below: it would have gone to the
head of the department, then to the chief of the division, then it
would have been handed over to the secretary, and the secretary would
have given it to me."
"But, your excellency," said Akakiy Akakievitch, trying to collect his
small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was
perspiring terribly, "I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you
because secretaries--are an untrustworthy race."
"What, what, what!" said the important personage. "Where did you get
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: towards Lysis, and the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with
one another. Some difference appears to be intended between the characters
of the more talkative Menexenus and the reserved and simple Lysis.
Socrates draws out the latter by a new sort of irony, which is sometimes
adopted in talking to children, and consists in asking a leading question
which can only be answered in a sense contrary to the intention of the
question: 'Your father and mother of course allow you to drive the
chariot?' 'No they do not.' When Menexenus returns, the serious dialectic
begins. He is described as 'very pugnacious,' and we are thus prepared for
the part which a mere youth takes in a difficult argument. But Plato has
not forgotten dramatic propriety, and Socrates proposes at last to refer
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: over the peopled darkness, unconfused now, because there was
something much more confusing. This, with a fatal great rush, was
simply the fact that they were thus together. They were near,
near, and all she had imagined of that had only become more true,
more dreadful and overwhelming. She stared straight away in
silence till she felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something,
to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended in a flood of
tears.
CHAPTER XVI
Her tears helped her really to dissimulate, for she had instantly,
in so public a situation, to recover herself. They had come and
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