| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: fruitless halts and appeals. Everywhere they found "kids" at a
premium.
The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad
huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said:
"There's a woman that's just took charge of the railroad eatin' house
down at Granite Junction. I hear she's got a little boy. Maybe she
might let him go."
Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o'clock in
the afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and
appeased passengers.
On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: magician." When he was drunk, one Wetter, his servant, told Erastus
(one of his enemies) that he used to offer to call up legions of
devils to prove his skill, while Wetter, in abject terror of his
spells, entreated him to leave the fiends alone--that he had sent
his book by a fiend to the spirit of Galen in hell, and challenged
him to say which was the better system, his or Paracelsus', and what
not?
His books were forbidden to be printed. He himself was refused a
hearing, and it was not till after ten years of wandering that he
found rest and protection in a little village of Carinthia.
Three years afterwards he died in the hospital of St. Sebastian at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: to some of its principal doctrines.
For the translation of these two dialogues I am indebted to my friend and
secretary, Mr. Knight.
That the Dialogue which goes by the name of the Second Alcibiades is a
genuine writing of Plato will not be maintained by any modern critic, and
was hardly believed by the ancients themselves. The dialectic is poor and
weak. There is no power over language, or beauty of style; and there is a
certain abruptness and agroikia in the conversation, which is very un-
Platonic. The best passage is probably that about the poets:--the remark
that the poet, who is of a reserved disposition, is uncommonly difficult to
understand, and the ridiculous interpretation of Homer, are entirely in the
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