| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: In our limited space we can give only the briefest description of
the general structure of the work. The founding of Christianity,
as illustrated in four principal scenes of the life of St. Peter,
supplies the material for the dramatic development of the
subject. The overture, beginning with an adagio movement in
B-flat minor, gives expression to the vague yearnings of that
time of doubt and hesitancy when the "oracles were dumb," and the
dawning of a new era of stronger and diviner faith was matter of
presentiment rather than of definite hope or expectation. Though
the tonality is at first firmly established, yet as the movement
becomes more agitated, the final tendency of the modulations also
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: He turned upon her sharply.
"Well, what is it NOW?"
"I want to ask you to let me off again to-night." She spoke in a
short, jerky, desperate way.
"What?" he shrieked. "Not go into the ring, with all them people
inside what's paid their money a-cause they knowed yer?"
"That's it," she cried. "I can't! I can't!"
"YER gettin' too tony!" Barker sneered. "That's the trouble with
you. You ain't been good for nothin' since you was at that
parson's house. Yer didn't stay there, and yer no use here.
First thing yer know yer'll be out all 'round."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings of
this life, the first and fundamental one; for the mind is so intimately
dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that
if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than
hitherto, I believe that it is in medicine they must be sought for. It is
true that the science of medicine, as it now exists, contains few things
whose utility is very remarkable: but without any wish to depreciate it, I
am confident that there is no one, even among those whose profession it
is, who does not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing
in comparison of what remains to be discovered; and that we could free
ourselves from an infinity of maladies of body as well as of mind, and
Reason Discourse |
