| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: placing people's servants about her tea-table, where the
etiquette was very strict. I wonder sometimes if the etiquette
of housekeepers' rooms is as strict to-day, and what my mother
would have made of a chauffeur....
On the whole I am glad that I saw so much as I did of
Bladesover--if for no other reason than because seeing it when I
did, quite naively, believing in it thoroughly, and then coming
to analyse it, has enabled me to understand much that would be
absolutely incomprehensible in the structure of English society.
Bladesover is, I am convinced, the clue to almost all that is
distinctively British and perplexing to the foreign inquirer in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it--
but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.
I was precious little better than the rest. Only--I was an officer
of that old coal wagon, anyhow--"
"I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.
He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly.
It was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four
men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil,
crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.
But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter--
footsteps in the saloon, a heavy knock. "There's enough wind
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: 40. Cf. Catalogue of the library of Fan family at Ningpo: "His
commentary is frequently obscure; it furnishes a clue, but does
not fully develop the meaning."
41. WEN HSIEN T`UNG K`AO, ch. 221.
42. It is interesting to note that M. Pelliot has recently
discovered chapters 1, 4 and 5 of this lost work in the "Grottos
of the Thousand Buddhas." See B.E.F.E.O., t. VIII, nos. 3-4, p.
525.
43. The Hsia, the Shang and the Chou. Although the last-named
was nominally existent in Sun Tzu's day, it retained hardly a
vestige of power, and the old military organization had
The Art of War |
