| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: send him to a free State, where he would be safe. The poor wretches
complied with this request, hoping to obtain money and freedom;
they would be sold to another master, and run away again, to their employers;
sometimes they would be sold in this manner three or four times,
until they had realized three or four thousand dollars by them;
but as, after this, there was fear of detection, the usual custom was
to get rid of the only witness that could be produced against them,
which was the negro himself, by murdering him, and throwing his body into
the Mississippi. Even if it was established that they had stolen a negro,
before he was murdered, they were always prepared to evade punishment;
for they concealed the negro who had run away, until he was advertised,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: been well likened to a great cathedral--we reverently accept,
with all its quaint carvings and hieroglyphic symbols, as the
authentic utterance of feelings which still exist, though they no
longer choose the same form of expression.
[57] Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, p. 84.
[58] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 123.
A century ago, therefore, a translation of Dante such as Mr.
Longfellow's would have been impossible. The criticism of that
time was in no mood for realistic reproductions of the antique.
It either superciliously neglected the antique, or else dressed
it up to suit its own notions of propriety. It was not like a
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: had become human to Gale. And with him Gale had learned to know
the simple needs of existence. Like dead scales the superficialities,
the falsities, the habits that had once meant all of life dropped
off, useless things in this stern waste of rock and sand.
Gale's happiness, as far as it concerned the toil and strife, was
perhaps a grim and stoical one. But love abided with him, and it
had engendered and fostered other undeveloped traits--romance
and a feeling for beauty, and a keen observation of nature. He
felt pain, but he was never miserable. He felt the solitude, but
he was never lonely.
As he rode across the desert, even though keen eyes searched for
Desert Gold |
