| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: me too old to résumé my duties of overman?"
"No, Simon, no indeed! You wear better than I do, my old friend!"
"And, sir, you shall be our viewer again. May the new working
last for many years, and pray Heaven I shall have the consolation
of dying without seeing the end of it!"
The old miner was overflowing with joy. James Starr fully
entered into it; but he let Ford rave for them both.
Harry alone remained thoughtful. To his memory recurred
the succession of singular, inexplicable circumstances
314
attending the discovery of the new bed. It made him uneasy
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: expedient of absenting myself so much as I was able; taking out classes
and sitting there regularly, often with small attention, the test of
which I found the other day in a note-book of that period, where I had
left off to follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my
book some very ill verses, though the Latinity is rather better than I
thought that I could ever have compassed. The evil of this course was
unhappily near as great as its advantage. I had the less time of
trial, but I believe, while the time lasted, I was tried the more
extremely. For she being so much left to solitude, she came to greet
my return with an increasing fervour that came nigh to overmaster me.
These friendly offers I must barbarously cast back; and my rejection
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with
counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are
passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other
ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their
prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never
driving at anything of this sort any more than Shakespeare in his
plays is driving at such ingenuities of verse-making as sonnets,
triolets, and the like. And this is why he is so easy for the
natural musician who has had no academic teaching. The
professors, when Wagner's music is played to them, exclaim at
once "What is this? Is it aria, or recitative? Is there no
|
