| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: wound, examined it carefully, and shook his head. The
ligaments had made a furrow in the skin. The leg, badly
swollen, seemed about to burst. At every move he made,
Demetrio stifled a moan. Luis Cervantes cut the liga-
ments, soaked the wound in water, covered the leg with
large clean rags and bound it up. Demetrio was able to
sleep all afternoon and all night. On the morrow he
woke up happy.
"That tenderfoot has the softest hand in the world!"
he said.
Quickly Venancio cut in:
The Underdogs |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: After Proserpina came, the palace was no longer the same abode
of stately artifice and dismal magnificence that it had before
been. The inhabitants all felt this, and King Pluto more than
any of them.
"My own little Proserpina," he used to say. "I wish you could
like me a little better. We gloomy and cloudy-natured persons
have often as warm hearts, at bottom, as those of a more
cheerful character. If you would only stay with me of your own
accord, it would make me happier than the possession of a
hundred such palaces as this."
"Ah," said Proserpina, "you should have tried to make me like
Tanglewood Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: any other than that may perhaps be advancement in Death; and that
this essential education might be more easily got, or given, than
they fancy, if they set about it in the right way; while it is for
no price, and by no favour, to be got, if they set about it in the
wrong.
Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective in the mind of
this busiest of countries, I suppose the first--at least that which
is confessed with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the
fittest stimulus to youthful exertion--is this of "Advancement in
life." May I ask you to consider with me, what this idea
practically includes, and what it should include?
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