| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: behind it--was full of promise. I asked if her ladyship's
misfortune were a trait of her malady or only of her character, and
he pronounced it a product of both. The case he wanted to put to
me was a matter on which it concerned him to have the impression--
the judgement, he might also say--of another person. "I mean of
the average intelligent man, but you see I take what I can get."
There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there
would be the way the question would strike a man of the world. He
had lighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was
glad to have it to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh
slightly artificial: "In fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: "Nonsense!" cried the old graybeard, his bright eyes twinkling merrily
as he turned toward the tempting Daemon. "The boys and girls are
never so noisy and fretful after receiving my presents, and if I can
make them happy for one day in the year I am quite content."
So the Daemon went back to the others, who awaited him in their caves,
and said:
"I have failed, for Santa Claus is not at all selfish."
The following day the Daemon of Envy visited Santa Claus. Said he:
"The toy shops are full of playthings quite as pretty as those you are
making. What a shame it is that they should interfere with your
business! They make toys by machinery much quicker than you can make
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for
fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to
tell the young Athenians that the ground of all sound knowledge
was--to understand the true meaning of the words which were in
their mouths all day long; and Socrates was a wiser man than we
shall ever see. So, instead of beginning an oration in praise of
heroism, I shall ask my readers to think with me what heroism is.
Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning of a word by
getting at its etymology--that is, at what it meant at first. And
if heroism means behaving like a hero, we must find out, it seems
to me, not merely what a hero may happen to mean just now, but
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