| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: suspected of bestowing praise out of mere flattery?
[24] "One knows plainly that these dumb attendants stand there like
mutes, but harbour every evil thought against their autocratic
lord."
Simonides made answer: Yes, I must indeed admit, I do concede to you,
that praise alone is sweetest which is breathed from lips of free men
absolutely free. But, look you, here is a point: you will find it hard
to persuade another, that you despots, within the limits of those
things whereby we one and all sustain our bodies, in respect, that is,
of meats and drinks, have not a far wider range of pleasures.
Yes, Simonides (he answered), and what is more, I know the explanation
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: case of the proletariat it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of
the material elaborations perpetually required from the despotism of
the aristocratic "/I will/." Here, too, then, in order to obey that
universal master, pleasure or gold, they must devour time, hasten
time, find more than four-and-twenty hours in the day and night, waste
themselves, slay themselves, and purchase two years of unhealthy
repose with thirty years of old age. Only, the working-man dies in
hospital when the last term of his stunted growth expires; whereas the
man of the middle class is set upon living, and lives on, but in a
state of idiocy. You will meet him, with his worn, flat old face, with
no light in his eyes, with no strength in his limbs, dragging himself
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: with a tenantry to make it profitable for him. An incident of
much greater importance in the story is the supposed murder of
one of the Pyncheons by his nephew, to whom we are introduced as
Clifford Pyncheon. In all probability Hawthorne connected with
this, in his mind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealthy gentleman
of Salem, killed by a man whom his nephew had hired. This took
place a few years after Hawthorne's gradation from college,
and was one of the celebrated cases of the day, Daniel Webster
taking part prominently in the trial. But it should be observed
here that such resemblances as these between sundry elements in
the work of Hawthorne's fancy and details of reality are only
House of Seven Gables |
