| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: finger and said: 'Hush! it is a little dead baby.' And I said: 'Oh, I
must go and call Lyndall, that she may look at it also.'
"And they put their faces close down to my ear and whispered: 'It is
Lyndall's baby.'
"And I said: 'She cannot be grown up yet; she is only a little girl!
Where is she?' And I went to look for you, but I could not find you.
"And when I came to some people who were dressed in black, I asked them
where you were, and they looked down at their black clothes, and shook
their heads, and said nothing; and I could not find you anywhere. And then
I awoke.
"Lyndall," she said, putting her face down upon the hands she held, "it
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: critics, to whom I refer, proceed chiefly on grounds of internal evidence;
they appear to me to lay too much stress on the variety of doctrine and
style, which must be equally acknowledged as a fact, even in the Dialogues
regarded by Schaarschmidt as genuine, e.g. in the Phaedrus, or Symposium,
when compared with the Laws. He who admits works so different in style and
matter to have been the composition of the same author, need have no
difficulty in admitting the Sophist or the Politicus. (The negative
argument adduced by the same school of critics, which is based on the
silence of Aristotle, is not worthy of much consideration. For why should
Aristotle, because he has quoted several Dialogues of Plato, have quoted
them all? Something must be allowed to chance, and to the nature of the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: symbol met his eyes on the high mantel-shelf above him--a colored
plaster cast of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. Bare
earth made the flooring of the cottage. It had been beaten level in
the first instance, but in course of time it had grown rough and
uneven, so that though it was clean, its ruggedness was not unlike
that of the magnified rind of an orange. A sabot filled with salt, a
frying-pan, and a large kettle hung inside the chimney. The farther
end of the room was completely filled by a four-post bedstead, with a
scalloped valance for decoration. The walls were black; there was an
opening to admit the light above the worm-eaten door; and here and
there were a few stools consisting of rough blocks of beech-wood, each
|
