| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: speaking have a superhuman wisdom which I may fail to describe, because I
have it not myself; and he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is
taking away my character. And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to
interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word
which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is
worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of Delphi--he will tell you
about my wisdom, if I have any, and of what sort it is. You must have
known Chaerephon; he was early a friend of mine, and also a friend of
yours, for he shared in the recent exile of the people, and returned with
you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in all his doings,
and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether--as I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: Constantia had noticed nothing; she sighed.
"Do you think we ought to have our dressing-gowns dyed as well?"
"Black?" almost shrieked Josephine.
"Well, what else?" said Constantia. "I was thinking--it doesn't seem quite
sincere, in a way, to wear black out of doors and when we're fully dressed,
and then when we're at home--"
"But nobody sees us," said Josephine. She gave the bedclothes such a
twitch that both her feet became uncovered, and she had to creep up the
pillows to get them well under again.
"Kate does," said Constantia. "And the postman very well might."
Josephine thought of her dark-red slippers, which matched her dressing-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: with the black cross above his head--that means death. Or perhaps
it is deliverance that the tablet commemorates--and then you will
see the miller kneeling beside his mill with a flood rushing down
upon it, or a peasant kneeling in his harvest-field under an
inky-black cloud, or a landlord beside his inn in flames, or a
mother praying beside her sick children; and above appears an
angel, or a saint, or the Virgin with her Child.
Read the inscriptions, too, in their quaint German. Some of them
are as humourous as the epitaphs in New England graveyards. I
remember one which ran like this:
Here lies Elias Queer,
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