| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;
there had been one tried at the 'sizes, not so long ago but what
there were people living who remembered it.
Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell's
frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it
lightly, stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the
pedlar, and thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all
nonsense, he said, about the man's evil looks. But this was spoken
of in the village as the random talk of youth, "as if it was only
Mr. Snell who had seen something odd about the pedlar!" On the
contrary, there were at least half-a-dozen who were ready to go
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: metre will suffer, but the poet's meaning is clear;--'Margites knew all
these things, but it was bad for him to know them.' And, obviously, if it
was bad for him to know so many things, he must have been a good-for-
nothing, unless the argument has played us false.
ALCIBIADES: But I do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if the
argument is fallacious, it would be difficult for me to find another which
I could trust.
SOCRATES: And you are right in thinking so.
ALCIBIADES: Well, that is my opinion.
SOCRATES: But tell me, by Heaven:--you must see now the nature and
greatness of the difficulty in which you, like others, have your part. For
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: fruit in the world ripens there with a southern exposure. The patient
toil of many generations has cut terraces in the cliff, so that the
face of the rock reflects the rays of the sun, and the produce of hot
climates may be grown out of doors in an artificially high temperature.
A church spire, rising out of one of the shallower dips in the line of
cliffs, marks the little village of Saint-Cyr, to which the scattered
houses all belong. And yet a little further the Choisille flows into
the Loire, through a fertile valley cut in the long low downs.
La Grenadiere itself, half-way up the hillside, and about a hundred
paces from the church, is one of those old-fashioned houses dating
back some two or three hundred years, which you find in every
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