| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: the advantage of adding an extra ten feet to the church spire.
Mandy felt herself almost an artist when she and Hasty bade the
pastor good night, for she was still quivering from the contagion
of Douglas's enthusiasm. Here, at last, was a master who could
do something besides find fault with her.
"I jest wan' to be on de groun' de firs' time dat Mars Douglas
and dat ere Deacon Strong clinches," she said to Hasty as they
locked the doors and turned out the hall light. "Did yuh done
see his jaw?" she whispered. "He look laughin' enough NOW, but
jes' yuh wait till he done set dat'ere jaw a his'n and afar ain't
nobody what's goin' ter unsot it."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: into two kinds?
PROTARCHUS: What are the two kinds?
SOCRATES: In the first place, arithmetic is of two kinds, one of which is
popular, and the other philosophical.
PROTARCHUS: How would you distinguish them?
SOCRATES: There is a wide difference between them, Protarchus; some
arithmeticians reckon unequal units; as for example, two armies, two oxen,
two very large things or two very small things. The party who are opposed
to them insist that every unit in ten thousand must be the same as every
other unit.
PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly there is, as you say, a great difference among the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: required us to make a choice among all the objects that appealed so
strongly to our desires? Did ever a young wife, to whom her husband,
during the first days of happiness, hands, twelve times a year, a
purse of gold, the budget of her personal fancies, dream of so many
different purchases, each of which would absorb the whole sum, as we
imagined possible on the eve of the first Sunday in each month? For
six francs during one night we owned every delight of that
inexhaustible shop! and during Mass every response we chanted was
mixed up in our minds with our secret calculations. Which of us all
can recollect ever having had a sou left to spend on the Sunday
following? And which of us but obeyed the instinctive law of social
Louis Lambert |
