| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: most likely to be permanent when the two friends are equal and independent,
or when they are engaged together in some common work or have some public
interest in common. It exists among the bad or inferior sort of men almost
as much as among the good; the bad and good, and 'the neither bad nor
good,' are drawn together in a strange manner by personal attachment. The
essence of it is loyalty, without which it would cease to be friendship.
Another question 9) may be raised, whether friendship can safely exist
between young persons of different sexes, not connected by ties of
relationship, and without the thought of love or marriage; whether, again,
a wife or a husband should have any intimate friend, besides his or her
partner in marriage. The answer to this latter question is rather
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: I simply said I couldn't paint him, that I was too moved. She
rather liked the idea--she's so romantic! It was that that made
her give me the donkey. But she was terribly upset at not
getting the portrait--she did so want him 'done' by some one
showy! At first I was afraid she wouldn't let me off--and at my
wits' end I suggested Grindle. Yes, it was I who started
Grindle: I told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming' man, and she told
somebody else, and so it got to be true. . . . And he painted
Stroud without wincing; and she hung the picture among her
husband's things. . . ."
He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: dumb child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very
intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with monsieur and
Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners of His Excellency Count
Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggoire. These
Swiss, who were possessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a
year, had let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three
years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, a man of
ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow himself any
gratifications, and very rarely went out; his daughter worked to
maintain him, translating English books, and writing some herself, it
was said. The Lovelaces could not afford to hire boats to row on the
Albert Savarus |
