| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: earliest likely moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably
wretched from that school where he was supposably storing up
Latin for future literary use--he had his youthful hands full,
and much more than full. He must have had to put aside his
Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in London, and
study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard,
almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and
rounded and flexible and letter-perfect English of the "Venus and
Adonis" in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn
great and fine and unsurpassable literary FORM.
However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: thick and muscular present a stronger and handsomer appearance, just
as in the case of a human being. Again, a comparatively broad chest is
better alike for strength and beauty, and better adapted to carry the
legs well asunder, so that they will not overlap and interfere with
one another. Again, the neck should not be set on dropping forward
from the chest, like a boar's, but, like that of a game-cock rather,
it should shoot upwards to the crest, and be slack[17] along the
curvature; whilst the head should be bony and the jawbone small. In
this way the neck will be well in front of the rider, and the eye will
command what lies before the horse's feet. A horse, moreover, of this
build, however spirited, will be least capable of overmastering the
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who
lived in a large gray house on the left bank of the Seine.
This tenderness turned very often into a positive heart-ache;
a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have read
the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment.
When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters
whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate,
happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical
with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is
temporarily suspended. Newman wished Madame de Cintre so well
that nothing he could think of doing for her in the future rose
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