| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: much. Sitting in his garden yesterday, he could never have imagined such
a change. But his heart did not hail the barkentine as usual. Books,
music, pale paper, and print--this was all that was coming to him,
some of its savor had gone; for the siren voice of Life had been speaking
with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the
world was restlessly answering it. Young Gaston showed more eagerness
than the Padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing
Trovatore in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he
took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would
be a missionary, too: a perfectly new experience.
"And you still forgive Verdi the sins of his youth?" he said to his host.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: case must they be left to ravening dogs and wolves. In this way he won
the goodwill not only of those who heard tell of these doings but of
the prisoners themselves. And whenever he brought over a city to his
side, he set the citizens free from the harsher service of a bondsman
to his lord, imposing the gentler obedience of a freeman to his ruler.
Indeed, there were fortresses impregnable to assault which he brought
under his power by the subtler force of human kindness.
[10] See Grote, vol. ix. p. 365 foll.
But when, in Phrygia even, the freedom of his march along the flats
was hampered by the cavalry of Pharnabazus, he saw that if he wished
to avoid a skulking warfare under cover, a force of cavalry was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: a theme as the meeting of a philosopher and a tyrant, once imagined by the
genius of a Sophist, may have passed into a romance which became famous in
Hellas and the world. It may have created one of the mists of history,
like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather as
there is no early independent testimony by which they are supported or with
|
