| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman in
evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and he
returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was stopping
expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find a
scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, he
looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that I
explained to him my nationality.
"I shouldn't have known it," he remarked, after an instant's pause.
I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, I
think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same old
mother-tongue!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: This one remained bashful, always stuck against the same pillar, never
moving from it, but readily ravished with the sight alone of this lady
whom he had chosen as his. His pale face was softly melancholy. His
physiognomy gave proof of fine heart, one of those which nourish
ardent passions and plunge delightedly into the despairs of love
without hope. Of these people there are few, because ordinarily one
likes more a certain thing than the unknown felicities lying and
flourishing at the bottommost depths of the soul.
This said gentleman, although his garments were well made, and clean
and neat, having even a certain amount of taste shown in the
arrangement, seemed to the constable's wife to be a poor knight
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or
inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their
spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes
with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the
greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and
in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his later
ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be expected
to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over
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