| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: like this?"
In all our discussions and speculations we had always
unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be,
would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy.
"Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming.
As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private
ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good
ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them
might have been a grandmother.
We looked for nervousness--there was none.
For terror, perhaps--there was none.
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature. As
far back as we can trace the progress of the human race
continuously by means of the written word, so far do we feel a
true historical interest in its fortunes, and pursue our
studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse of time is
powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history never
has been and never will be written, whose career on the earth,
dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by
palaeontology, excites in us a very different feeling. Though
with the keenest interest we ransack every nook and corner of
the earth's surface for information about him, we are all the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: either dropped a hint at the moment, or later sent me some line to the
effect that the incident was, of course, "between ourselves." That would
have been both permissible and practical; but there it was, the
difference between John of Kings Port and us others; he was not practical
when it came to something "between gentlemen," as he would have said. The
finest flower of breeding blossoms above the level of the practical, and
that is why you do not find it growing in the huge truck-garden of our
age, save in corners where it has not yet been uprooted. John's silence
to me was something that I liked very much, and he must have found that
it was not misplaced.
The first external splash of the few that I have to narrate was a
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