| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: would care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. "You
miserable little -------" (here is a word I dare not print, it
would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ------," he
cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you
are a million times a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish
it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your
house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul
enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even
with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have
been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the
recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest
feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: 'The eye must
be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.' 'Now I can well
imagine a fool's paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking,
clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their
wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers
and all the other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. And
a State may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into
boon companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we are not
talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man is
expected to do his own work. The happiness resides not in this or that
The Republic |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: boots, prominent white cotton gloves that caught
your eye a hundred yards away; and he, his coat
slung picturesquely over one shoulder, pacing by
her side, gallant of bearing and casting tender
glances upon the girl with the golden heart. I
wonder whether he saw how plain she was. Perhaps
among types so different from what he had ever
seen, he had not the power to judge; or perhaps
he was seduced by the divine quality of her
pity.
"Yanko was in great trouble meantime. In his
Amy Foster |
