| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: penetration--I defy it--that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-
chat have ever since been working upon Trim's and my uncle Toby's pattern.-
-I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or Ricaboni say--(though
I never read one of them)--there is not a greater difference between a
single-horse chair and madam Pompadour's vis-a-vis; than betwixt a single
amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing
throughout a grand drama--Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind-
-is quite lost in five acts--but that is neither here nor there.
After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my
uncle Toby's quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which
shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man! found it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: his boots, and sturdy goloshes -- the huge clumsy goloshes only
seen on the feet of practical and prudent persons of firm
religious convictions.
His torpid eyes, sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He
saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey
puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened
candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov
running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to
the churchwarden. . . . All these things he had seen for years,
and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand. .
. . There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, to be sure, I have seen them, and I have often heard
the others described.
STRANGER: And you may have heard also, and may have been assured by
report, although you have not travelled in those regions, of nurseries of
geese and cranes in the plains of Thessaly?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: I asked you, because here is a new division of the management of
herds, into the management of land and of water herds.
YOUNG SOCRATES: There is.
STRANGER: And do you agree that we ought to divide the collective rearing
of herds into two corresponding parts, the one the rearing of water, and
Statesman |
