| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to
have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly,
of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our
shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only
our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon
us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever
yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: reality, and that one must live for others if one
would be unceasingly happy."
At this point one realises the gulf which divides
the Slavonic from the English temperament. No
average Englishman of seven-and-twenty (as Tol-
stoy was then) would pursue reflections of this
kind, or if he did, he would in all probability keep
them sedulously to himself.
To Tolstoy and his aunt, on the contrary, it
seemed the most natural thing in the world to
indulge in egoistic abstractions and to expatiate
The Forged Coupon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Will through the meadows, of their own free will,
Untended come to drink. Here Mincius hath
With tender rushes rimmed his verdant banks,
And from yon sacred oak with busy hum
The bees are swarming." What was I to do?
No Phyllis or Alcippe left at home
Had I, to shelter my new-weaned lambs,
And no slight matter was a singing-bout
'Twixt Corydon and Thyrsis. Howsoe'er,
I let my business wait upon their sport.
So they began to sing, voice answering voice
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