| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled
shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief
and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the
handle of his forty-five under his coat.
"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia! I
shall see that the board of immigration and public improvements hears
of this!"
"Be so unfoolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by
order of the board of perforation and public depravity. This is a
business meeting, and we're anxious to adjourn /sine qua non/."
We drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of it as
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: getting one. Why, there was your mother, now: to be
sure, when I popp'd the question to her she did look
a little silly; but when she had once looked down on
her apron-strings, as all modest young women us'd to
do, and drawled out ye-s, she was as brisk and as
merry as a bee.
MARIA
My honoured mother, Sir, had no motive to mel-
ancholy; she married the man of her choice.
VAN ROUGH
The man of her choice! And pray, Mary, an't you
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field of
argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who is
described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have
descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of
error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the withdrawal of
Socrates that he is passing beyond the limits of his teaching; and in the
Sophist and Statesman, as well as in the Parmenides, he probably means to
imply that he is making a closer approach to the schools of Elea and
Megara. He had much in common with them, but he must first submit their
ideas to criticism and revision. He had once thought as he says, speaking
by the mouth of the Eleatic, that he understood their doctrine of Not-
|
