| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: so, on the chance of being right, he examined the room, but
unobtrusively and by stealth.
The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely visible,
the hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands tried to meet
in front of a sham log of fire-brick, as carefully buried as a
miser's treasure could ever be. An old Aubusson carpet, very much
faded, very much mended, and as worn as a pensioner's coat, did
not cover the whole of the tiled floor, and the cold struck to
his feet. The walls were hung with a reddish paper, imitating
figured silk with a yellow pattern. In the middle of the wall
opposite the windows the painter saw a crack, and the outline
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: princes?" I answered. "Judge thou, O King!"
Now, Chaka brooded awhile, then he spoke: "Say, Mopo, can it be done
this night?"
"There are but few men in the kraal, O King. All are gone out to war;
and of those few many are the servants of the princes, and perhaps
they might give blow for blow."
"How then, Mopo?"
"Nay, I know not, O King; yet at the great kraal beyond the river sits
that regiment which is named the Slayers. By midday to-morrow they
might be here, and then--"
"Thou speakest wisely, my child Mopo; it shall be for to-morrow. Go
Nada the Lily |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: the part which a mere youth takes in a difficult argument. But Plato has
not forgotten dramatic propriety, and Socrates proposes at last to refer
the question to some older person.
SOME QUESTIONS RELATING TO FRIENDSHIP.
The subject of friendship has a lower place in the modern than in the
ancient world, partly because a higher place is assigned by us to love and
marriage. The very meaning of the word has become slighter and more
superficial; it seems almost to be borrowed from the ancients, and has
nearly disappeared in modern treatises on Moral Philosophy. The received
examples of friendship are to be found chiefly among the Greeks and Romans.
Hence the casuistical or other questions which arise out of the relations
Lysis |
