| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?
They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about
the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: being--and it holds of all the domestic quadrupeds[32]--that with
advance of time the legs hardly increase at all, while the rest of the
body grows uniformly up to these, until it has attained its proper
symmetry.
[32] Cf. Aristot. "de Part. Anim." iv. 10; "H. A." ii. 1; Plin. "N.
H." xi. 108.
Such is the type[33] of colt and such the tests to be applied, with
every prospect of getting a sound-footed, strong, and fleshy animal
fine of form and large of stature. If changes in some instances
develop during growth, that need not prevent us from applying our
tests in confidence. It far more often happens that an ugly-looking
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: The position of the head is well defined in every organism. If
by any chance a nation allows its head to fall at its feet, it is
pretty sure sooner or later to discover that this is a suicidal
measure; and since nations have no desire to perish, they set to
work at once to grow a new head. If they lack the strength for
this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice, and so many other
states.
This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social
activity, emphasised by differences in their manner of living,
necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real
worth and some distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter
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