| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: you?"
That sort of thing belongs rather to the Palmerston days than to these;
belongs to days that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 1815, which
a haughty England won, than to the Waterloo of 1914-18, which a humbler
England so nearly lost.
Turn we next the other way for a look at ourselves. An American lady who
had brought a letter of introduction to an Englishman in London was in
consequence asked to lunch. He naturally and hospitably gathered to meet
her various distinguished guests. Afterwards she wrote him that she
wished him to invite her to lunch again, as she had matters of importance
to tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to lunch with her? Can you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: do subjects we can measure."
"I'll do whatever you tell me," Overt said, deeply attentive. "But
pardon me if I say I don't understand how you've been reading my
book," he added. "I've had you before me all the afternoon, first
in that long walk, then at tea on the lawn, till we went to dress
for dinner, and all the evening at dinner and in this place."
St. George turned his face about with a smile. "I gave it but a
quarter of an hour."
"A quarter of an hour's immense, but I don't understand where you
put it in. In the drawing-room after dinner you weren't reading -
you were talking to Miss Fancourt."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the
same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power
is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be
economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the
divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind
which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly been
followed, we can see which is worked out in the largest spirit, and
determine the exact limitations under which the Creator places the
movement of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We
should find ourselves in a very false position, if it should prove
that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept up by
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
