| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative
and inferential particles in English, and by the nice sense of tautology
which characterizes all modern languages. We cannot have two 'buts' or two
'fors' in the same sentence where the Greek repeats (Greek). There is a
similar want of particles expressing the various gradations of objective
and subjective thought--(Greek) and the like, which are so thickly
scattered over the Greek page. Further, we can only realize to a very
imperfect degree the common distinction between (Greek), and the
combination of the two suggests a subtle shade of negation which cannot be
expressed in English. And while English is more dependent than Greek upon
the apposition of clauses and sentences, yet there is a difficulty in using
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: you think I'm flattered,' I said to him, `you're mistaken.
She was the mess who used to sit out on a rock with her back
hair down, combing away and singing like mad, and keeping an
eye out for sailors up and down the river. If I had to work
that hard to get some attention,' I said, `I'd give up the
struggle, and settle down with a cat and a teakettle.'
At that he just threw back his head and roared. And when
Mrs. Brandeis came up he said something about the wit of
these American women. `Work is a great sharpener of wit--
and wits,' Mrs. Brandeis said to him. `Pearl, did Aloysius
send Eddie out with that boiler, special?' And she didn't
Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: not very near, the good people of Tring having held the railway, of
old days, in extreme apprehension, lest some day it should break
loose in the town and work mischief. I had a last walk, among russet
beeches as usual, and the air filled, as usual, with the carolling of
larks; I heard shots fired in the distance, and saw, as a new sign of
the fulfilled autumn, two horsemen exercising a pack of fox-hounds.
And then the train came and carried me back to London.
CHAPTER IV - A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY - A FRAGMENT -
1876
AT the famous bridge of Doon, Kyle, the central district of the shire
of Ayr, marches with Carrick, the most southerly. On the Carrick
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