| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers
abound. However, I thanked him for his good opinion, and
promised to take the matter into my thoughts."
He said "he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear
me speak so loud;" asking me "whether the king or queen of that
country were thick of hearing?" I told him, "it was what I had
been used to for above two years past, and that I admired as much
at the voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to
whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough. But, when I
spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the streets,
to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have got one delightful letter from you, and
heard from my mother of your kindness in going to see her. Thank
you for that: you can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . Ay,
ay, it is sad to sell 17; sad and fine were the old days: when I
was away in Apemama, I wrote two copies of verse about Edinburgh
and the past, so ink black, so golden bright. I will send them, if
I can find them, for they will say something to you, and indeed one
is more than half addressed to you. This is it -
TO MY OLD COMRADES
Do you remember - can we e'er forget? -
How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: of us, our tastes, our needs, or our vain-glory, I hardly need to
speak; for it is the very essence of a nature's faculty - the very
tenure of his existence: and without truthfulness science would be
as impossible now as chivalry would have been of old.
And last, but not least, the perfect naturalist should have in him
the very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion; the
desire to advance, not himself and his own fame or wealth, but
knowledge and mankind. He should have this great virtue; and in
spite of many shortcomings (for what man is there who liveth and
sinneth not?), naturalists as a class have it to a degree which
makes them stand out most honourably in the midst of a self-seeking
|
