| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: pulled their garments from the piles on long tables. It was for
the next generation to patronize clothiers who kept each suit on
its separate hanger. A moving-picture of the tall,
broad-shouldered fellow, as, with creaking steps, he walked from
the house, might bring a laugh from the young farmers of this
more fastidious day, but Martin was dressed no worse than any of
his neighbors and far better than many. Health, vigor,
sturdiness, self-reliance shone from him, and once his make-up
had ceased to obtrude its clumsiness, he struck one as handsome.
His was a commanding physique, hard as the grim plains from which
he wrested his living.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: he had spoken of long journeyings by sea and land; of perils
by fire and flood; of wolves and bears, and fierce snowstorms,
and black nights in the lonely forest; of dark altars of
heathen gods, and weird, bloody sacrifices, and narrow escapes
from murderous bands of wandering savages.
The little novices had gathered around him, and their
faces had grown pale and their eyes bright as they listened
with parted lips, entranced in admiration, twining their arms
about one another's shoulders and holding closely together,
half in fear, half in delight. The older nuns had turned from
their tasks and paused, in passing by, to bear the pilgrim's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: surrounding states, and raised Wu to the short-lived zenith of
her power. Hence, what more natural, as time went on, than that
the acknowledged master of strategy, Sun Wu, should be popularly
identified with that campaign, at first perhaps only in the sense
that his brain conceived and planned it; afterwards, that it was
actually carried out by him in conjunction with Wu Yuan, [34] Po
P`ei and Fu Kai?
It is obvious that any attempt to reconstruct even the
outline of Sun Tzu's life must be based almost wholly on
conjecture. With this necessary proviso, I should say that he
probably entered the service of Wu about the time of Ho Lu's
The Art of War |
