| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: words, and were they given by nature or convention? In the presocratic
philosophy mankind had been striving to attain an expression of their
ideas, and now they were beginning to ask themselves whether the expression
might not be distinguished from the idea? They were also seeking to
distinguish the parts of speech and to enquire into the relation of subject
and predicate. Grammar and logic were moving about somewhere in the depths
of the human soul, but they were not yet awakened into consciousness and
had not found names for themselves, or terms by which they might be
expressed. Of these beginnings of the study of language we know little,
and there necessarily arises an obscurity when the surroundings of such a
work as the Cratylus are taken away. Moreover, in this, as in most of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: expressed it, "them twins are alike as two peas, and which is which,
I dunno." Considering himself one of the family from his long
service with Colonel McIntyre, he kept a watchful eye on the twins,
but their pranks in childhood had often exasperated him into giving
notice, which he generally found it convenient to forget when the
first of a new month came around.
"Mr. Kent will be back to-morrow," added the butler, as silence
followed the delivery of his message. "Mr. Rochester wishes to know
if he can transact any business for you."
"Please thank him and say no." The girl's color rose as she caught
her father's disapproving look. The colonel waited until the butler
The Red Seal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: she were young and remarkably pretty I received so significant a
"No sir!" that I risked an advance and after a minute in this
manner found myself, to my astonishment, face to face with Mrs.
Meldrum.
"Oh you dear thing," she exclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you: you
spare me another compromising demarche! But for this I should have
called on you also. Know the worst at once: if you see me here
it's at least deliberate--it's planned, plotted, shameless. I came
up on purpose to see him, upon my word I'm in love with him. Why,
if you valued my peace of mind, did you let him the other day at
Folkestone dawn upon my delighted eyes? I found myself there in
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