| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: "'No.'
"'Will you swear it on your eternal life?'
"He was about to swear; his mother raised her eyes to him, and said:--
"'Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is not true; you
can repent, you can amend; there is still time.'
"And she wept.
"'You are a this and a that,' he said; 'you have always wanted to ruin
me.'
"Cambremer turned white and said,--
"'Such language to your mother increases your crime. Come, to the
point! Will you swear?'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: surname of [Greek text: skoteinos] the dark one. I have tried in vain
to read it: you, if you will, may do the same.
Philetas, the remaining member of the Alexandrian Triad, seems to have
been a more simple, genial, and graceful spirit than the other two, to
whom he was accordingly esteemed inferior. Only a few fragments are
left; but he was not altogether without his influence, for he was, as I
have just said, one of the models on which Propertius and Ovid formed
themselves; and some, indeed, call him the Father of the Latin elegy,
with its terseness, grace, and clear epigrammatic form of thought, and,
therefore, in a great degree, of our modern eighteenth century poets;
not a useless excellence, seeing that it is, on the whole, good for him
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: I have indicated, of course I must cease to have any personal share
in the management, and it is contrary to my views of responsibility
to continue a large application of means to an institution which I
cannot watch over and to some extent regulate. I shall therefore,
in case of my ultimate decision to leave Middlemarch, consider that I
withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that which will subsist
in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of building it,
and have contributed further large sums to its successful working."
Lydgate's thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont,
was, "He has perhaps been losing a good deal of money."
This was the most plausible explanation of a speech which had caused
Middlemarch |
