The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: During one verse of the song the wood nymph per-
formed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene.
At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a
strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into
the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla's last leap
had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding
her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that
was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece
of putty.
When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and
covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: "Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the "Mountain" of
1848-51 for the "Mountain" of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle. The
identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole
cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out
of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past
generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the
very time when men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and
themselves, in bringing about what never was before, at such very epochs
of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into their service
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall of
Salisbury Crags: and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark
and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of
Arthur's Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue
of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the
right, the roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one
above another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk
and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky. -
Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon; and at the same
instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's
flagstaff close at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke
|