| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: ing already won the affections of the Governor, he
was permitted to remain, even to rent an acre of
land from the Church in the sheltered Mission val-
ley, and build himself a house. Here he raised
fruit and vegetables for his own hospitable table,
chickens and game cocks. Books and other lux-
uries came by every ship from Boston; until for a
long interval ships came no more. One of these
days, when the power of the priests had abated, and
the jealousy which would keep all Californians land-
less but themselves was counterbalanced by a great
Rezanov |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: were being allotted to us in various hotels, and with several
others I walked outside the station to question people about
the mutiny and the bombardment of which we had heard in
Finland. Nobody knew anything about it. As soon as the
rooms were allotted and I knew that I had been lucky
enough to get one in the Astoria, I drove off across the
frozen river by the Liteini Bridge. The trams were running.
The town seemed absolutely quiet, and away down the river
I saw once again in the dark, which is never quite dark
because of the snow, the dim shape of the fortress, and
passed one by one the landmarks I had come to know so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical
nature of Heine.
And indeed I think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that
might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the
maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest
of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think it
would do for us: there is no surer test of a great country than
how near it stands to its own poets; but between the singers of our
day and the workers to whom they would sing there seems to be an
ever-widening and dividing chasm, a chasm which slander and mockery
cannot traverse, but which is spanned by the luminous wings of
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