| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: him, it seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality,
public and private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes
was like, in Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there
remains proof enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David
Lindsay--that the morality of the populace, which looked up to the
nobles as its example and its guide, was not a whit better. As
anarchy increased, immorality was likely to increase likewise; and
Scotland was in serious danger of falling into such a state as that
into which Poland fell, to its ruin, within a hundred and fifty
years after; in which the savagery of feudalism, without its order
or its chivalry, would be varnished over by a thin coating of French
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: that young and thoughtless. He couldn't ever realize bad companions when
they came around. See that!" She showed me a paper, taking it out like a
precious thing, as indeed it was; for it was a pardon signed by Governor
Barker. "And the Governor has let me carry it to Nate myself. He won't
know a thing about it till I tell him. The Governor was real kind, and we
will never forget him. I reckon Nate must have a mustache by now?" said
she to Lin.
"Yes," Lin answered, gruffly, looking away from her, "he has got a
mustache all right."
"He'll be glad to see you," said I, for something to say.
"Of course he will! How many hours did you say we will be?" she asked
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood
Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read
on the evening before I began to write myself. I believe it was
a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony
Trollope's novels. It is very likely. My acquaintance with him
was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose
works I read for the first time in English. With men of European
reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was
otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative
literature was "Nicholas Nickleby." It is extraordinary how well
Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish and the
A Personal Record |
