| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: anywhere else. For men will love you in other places to which you may go,
and not in Athens only; there are friends of mine in Thessaly, if you like
to go to them, who will value and protect you, and no Thessalian will give
you any trouble. Nor can I think that you are at all justified, Socrates,
in betraying your own life when you might be saved; in acting thus you are
playing into the hands of your enemies, who are hurrying on your
destruction. And further I should say that you are deserting your own
children; for you might bring them up and educate them; instead of which
you go away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance; and if
they do not meet with the usual fate of orphans, there will be small thanks
to you. No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: anything appertaining to the lady, it is most unsuitable to the
origin, character, and history of the dog; for the dog was the
gift to the child from a man for whom words had anything but an
Ollendorffian value, a man almost childlike in the impulsive
movements of his untutored genius, the most single-minded of
verbal impressionists, using his great gifts of straight feeling
and right expression with a fine sincerity and a strong if,
perhaps, not fully conscious conviction. His art did not obtain,
I fear, all the credit its unsophisticated inspiration deserved.
I am alluding to the late Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red
Badge of Courage," a work of imagination which found its short
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: "I didn't quite know at the time. It was simply to be with him, I
suppose--just once. He's in danger, and I wanted him to know I
know it. It makes meeting him--at Cocker's, since it's that I want
to stay on for--more interesting."
"It makes it mighty interesting for ME!" Mr. Mudge freely declared.
"Yet he didn't follow you?" he asked. "I would!"
"Yes, of course. That was the way you began, you know. You're
awfully inferior to him."
"Well, my dear, you're not inferior to anybody. You've got a
cheek! What's he in danger of?"
"Of being found out. He's in love with a lady--and it isn't right-
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