| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: of her own children on her lips, their waxen fingers on her
bosom.
And yet again, is this life so long? May it not be better to
wait until its little day is done, and the summer night of old
age has yielded to a new morning, before attaining that acme of
joy? Are there enough successive grades of bliss for all
eternity, if so much be consummated here? Must all novels end
with an earthly marriage, and nothing be left for heaven?
Perhaps, for such as Hope, this life is given to show what
happiness might be, and they await some other sphere for its
fulfilment. The greater part of the human race live out their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you
take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose
that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant,
whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid
that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true? I am confident that
they cannot deny this.
He agreed with me.
Well then, I shall say, if you agree so far, be so good as to answer me a
question: Do not the same magnitudes appear larger to your sight when
near, and smaller when at a distance? They will acknowledge that. And the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: and personally I was glad of that, for I saw in it another proof of
my father's confidence in his family. I need hardly add that I
never doubted that my father's wishes would be carried out.
My sister Masha, with whom I once had a conversation on the
subject, was of the same opinion.
In 1909 my father stayed with Mr. Tchertkof at Krekshin, and
there for the first time he wrote a formal will, attested by the
signature of witnesses. How this will came to be written I do not
know, and I do not intend to discuss it. It afterward appeared
that it also was imperfect from a legal point of view, and in
October, 1909, it had all to be done again.
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