| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: tabors, timbrels, and rebecks! And then if among all these different
sorts of music that of the albogues is heard, almost all the
pastoral instruments will be there."
"What are albogues?" asked Sancho, "for I never in my life heard
tell of them or saw them."
"Albogues," said Don Quixote, "are brass plates like candlesticks
that struck against one another on the hollow side make a noise which,
if not very pleasing or harmonious, is not disagreeable and accords
very well with the rude notes of the bagpipe and tabor. The word
albogue is Morisco, as are all those in our Spanish tongue that
begin with al; for example, almohaza, almorzar, alhombra, alguacil,
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: did and Galen and Aristotle? Did he guide a whole school towards
new worlds? No. Though it is impossible to deny that this
persistent observer of human chemistry possessed that antique
science of the Mages, that is to say, knowledge of the elements
in fusion, the causes of life, life antecedent to life, and what
it must be in its incubation or ever it IS, it must be confessed
that, unfortunately, everything in him was purely personal.
Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is now
suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue
to repeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at
its own cost.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: "And I," said the Second Footpad, "stood up the United States
District Attorney, and got away with - "
"Good Lord!" interrupted the other in astonishment and admiration -
"you got away with what that fellow had?"
"No," the unfortunate narrator explained - "with a small part of
what I had."
Equipped for Service
DURING the Civil War a Patriot was passing through the State of
Maryland with a pass from the President to join Grant's army and
see the fighting. Stopping a day at Annapolis, he visited the shop
of a well-known optician and ordered seven powerful telescopes, one
Fantastic Fables |
