| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: zeness of the world's smoothest roads it was small
wonder that she was quick to recognize in the refined
purlieus of the Hotel Lotus the most desirable spot in
America for a restful sojourn during the heat of mid-
summer.
On the third day of Madame Beaumont's residence
in the hotel a young man entered and registered him-
self as a guest. His clothing -- to speak of his
points in approved order -- was quietly in the mode;
his features good and regular; his expression that of
a poised and sophisticated man of the world. He in-
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: to "believe in me" in an Italian garden on a midsummer night.
There was some merit in my scruples, for Miss Tita lingered and lingered:
I perceived that she felt that she should not really soon come
down again and wished therefore to protract the present.
She insisted too on making the talk between us personal to ourselves;
and altogether her behavior was such as would have been possible
only to a completely innocent woman.
"I shall like the flowers better now that I know they are also meant for me."
"How could you have doubted it? If you will tell me the kind you
like best I will send a double lot of them."
"Oh, I like them all best!" Then she went on, familiarly: "Shall you study--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: present quality of the soul. Yet at the conclusion of the Dialogue, having
'arrived at the end of the intellectual world' (Republic), he replaces the
veil of mythology, and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the
language of the mysteries or of a disciple of Zoroaster. Nor can we fairly
demand of Plato a consistency which is wanting among ourselves, who
acknowledge that another world is beyond the range of human thought, and
yet are always seeking to represent the mansions of heaven or hell in the
colours of the painter, or in the descriptions of the poet or rhetorician.
15. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not new to the Greeks
in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a foundation in the
popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering ghost flitting away
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