| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: guide to its morals(6)) Aristotle is completely unaware. I do not
allude to such smaller points as the oligarchical tendencies of a
horse-breeding country and the democratic influence of the
proximity of the sea (important though they are for the
consideration of Greek history), but rather to those wider views in
the seventh book of his POLITICS, where he attributes the happy
union in the Greek character of intellectual attainments with the
spirit of progress to the temperate climate they enjoyed, and
points out how the extreme cold of the north dulls the mental
faculties of its inhabitants and renders them incapable of social
organisation or extended empire; while to the enervating heat of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: that, and some of the best people have taken her up. I hear she
has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine, which must
have cost a fabulous sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about
it; he was there last Sunday evening. He assures me he has
never tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an
expert. By the way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort
of woman, this Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine asked her how old the
wine was, and what do you think she said? 'About a thousand
years, I believe.' Lord Argentine thought she was chaffing him,
you know, but when he laughed she said she was speaking quite
seriously and offered to show him the jar. Of course, he
The Great God Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: journey's end the gig was housed, the horse was fed and
comforted, and the two young doctors in a private room sat
down to the best dinner and the best wine the house afforded.
The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon the window, the
cold, incongruous work that lay before them, added zest to
their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their
cordiality increased. Soon Macfarlane handed a little pile
of gold to his companion.
'A compliment,' he said. 'Between friends these little d-d
accommodations ought to fly like pipe-lights.'
Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded the sentiment to the
|
