| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: Genoa built by its traders, Florence by its bankers, and Venice,
most lovely of all, by its noble and honest merchants.
I do not wish you, remember, 'to build a new Pisa,' nor to bring
'the life or the decorations of the thirteenth century back again.'
'The circumstances with which you must surround your workmen are
those' of modern American life, 'because the designs you have now
to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern' American
'life beautiful.' The art we want is the art based on all the
inventions of modern civilisation, and to suit all the needs of
nineteenth-century life.
Do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? I tell
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: over his aching shoulders? Get away! But how? If he attempted
to move he would step off into nothing, and perish in the
crashing fall of that universe of which he was the only support.
And what were the voices saying? Urging him to move! Why? Move
to destruction! Not likely! The absurdity of the thing filled
him with indignation. He got a firmer foothold and stiffened his
muscles in heroic resolve to carry his burden to all eternity.
And ages passed in the superhuman labour, amidst the rush of
circling worlds; in the plaintive murmur of sorrowful voices
urging him to desist before it was too late--till the mysterious
power that had laid upon him the giant task seemed at last to
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: myself of any particulars I may have since received concerning
the localities of the detail, but suffer them to rest under the
same general description in which they were first related to me;
and for the same reason I will not add to or diminish the
narrative by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but
simply rehearse, as I heard it, a story of supernatural terror.
About the end of the American war, when the officers of Lord
Cornwallis's army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others, who
had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated
controversy, were returning to their own country, to relate their
adventures, and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was
|
