| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: resemblance in person to a dead son, whose name had also been Otto.
He could not have adopted the plebeian youth, at least to the
extent of giving him an old and haughty name, but this the latter
nevertheless expected, up to the time of the Baron's death. He had
inherited a little property from his benefactor, but soon ran
through it. "He was a light-headed fellow," said Johann Helm, "but
he knew how to get the confidence of the old Junkers. If he
hadn't been so cowardly and fidgety, he might have made himself a
career."
The Polish episode differed so little from my interpretation that
I need not repeat Helm's version. He denied having stolen Otto's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: a keen impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords
under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was
softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair,
cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close
ranks as ever.
"Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded
to Adam, "begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you
what d-r-y spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you
know."
"Bill" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent
stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade
Adam Bede |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: unity of which we were just now speaking.
Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical, or
physiological point of view, the materials of our knowledge are
inexhaustible. The comparisons of children learning to speak, of barbarous
nations, of musical notes, of the cries of animals, of the song of birds,
increase our insight into the nature of human speech. Many observations
which would otherwise have escaped us are suggested by them. But they do
not explain why, in man and in man only, the speaker met with a response
from the hearer, and the half articulate sound gradually developed into
Sanscrit and Greek. They hardly enable us to approach any nearer the
secret of the origin of language, which, like some of the other great
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