| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke,
and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to
do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I
think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social
position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual
social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre
for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of
good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was
undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H.
even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not
sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: failed utterly to make known to other folk. After all,
language did not grow fast in that day.
Oh, believe me, we were amazingly simple. But we did
know a lot that is not known to-day. We could twitch
our ears, prick them up and flatten them down at will.
And we could scratch between our shoulders with ease.
We could throw stones with our feet. I have done it
many a time. And for that matter, I could keep my
knees straight, bend forward from the hips, and touch,
not the tips of my fingers, but the points of my
elbows, to the ground. And as for bird-nesting--well,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: "Yes."
"But that is his delusion; he thinks he sells his wine, and he hasn't
any."
"Ha!" snorted the traveller, "then I'll go straight to Monsieur
Vernier and thank him."
And Gaudissart departed, boiling over with rage, to shake the ex-dyer,
whom he found in his salon, laughing with a company of friends to whom
he had already recounted the tale.
"Monsieur," said the prince of travellers, darting a savage glance at
his enemy, "you are a scoundrel and a blackguard; and under pain of
being thought a turn-key,--a species of being far below a galley-
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