| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: LADY MARKBY. Well, I hope he is not as devoted to Blue Books as Sir
John is. I don't think they can be quite improving reading for any
one.
MRS. CHEVELEY [Languidly.] I have never read a Blue Book. I prefer
books . . . in yellow covers.
LADY MARKBY. [Genially unconscious.] Yellow is a gayer colour, is
it not? I used to wear yellow a good deal in my early days, and
would do so now if Sir John was not so painfully personal in his
observations, and a man on the question of dress is always
ridiculous, is he not?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh, no! I think men are the only authorities on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: easily measure the importance. There is a further objection which may be
urged equally against all applications of the Darwinian theory. As in
animal life and likewise in vegetable, so in languages, the process of
change is said to be insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to
pass into one another by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the
newly-created forms soon become fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the
intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the change is
wanting.
(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many
of the rules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the
corrections of it which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: enough to allow them to scatter. When the smoke cleared a little I saw
that nearly a dozen men were down, and that the rest, dismayed by this
reception, had halted. If they had come on then, while we were loading,
doubtless they might have rushed the place; but, being unused to the
terrible effects of firearms, they paused, amazed. A number of them,
twenty or thirty perhaps, clustered about the bodies of the fallen
Kaffirs, and, seizing my second gun, I fired both barrels at these with
such fearful effect that the whole regiment took to their heels and
fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the ground. As they ran our
servants cheered, but I called to them to be silent and load swiftly,
knowing well that the enemy would soon return.
Marie |
