| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: often that, about three in the morning, Sarrasine, while not
absolutely drunk, was powerless to resist his delirious passion. In a
moment of frenzy he seized the woman and carried her to a sort of
boudoir which opened from the salon, and toward which he had more than
once turned his eyes. The Italian was armed with a dagger.
" 'If you come hear me,' she said, 'I shall be compelled to plunge
this blade into your heart. Go! you would despise me. I have conceived
too great a respect for your character to abandon myself to you thus.
I do not choose to destroy the sentiment with which you honor me.'
" 'Ah!' said Sarrasine, 'to stimulate a passion is a poor way to
extinguish it! Are you already so corrupt that, being old in heart,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: not only sobered, but brought home to him this real border life. With all his
fire and daring he new he was no fool. He had eagerly embraced a career which,
at the present stage of his training, was beyond his scope--not that he did
not know how to act in sudden crises, but because he had not had the necessary
practice to quickly and surely use his knowledge.
Bitter, indeed, was his self-scorn when he recalled that of the several
critical positions he had been in since his acquaintance with Wetzel, he had
failed in all but one. The exception was the killing of Silvertip. Here his
fury had made him fight as Wetzel fought with only his every day incentive. He
realized that the border was no place for any save the boldest and most
experienced hunters--men who had become inured to hardship, callous as to
The Spirit of the Border |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: up a new kind of harmony, swelling into strains not less majestic than
those of Homer, Virgil, or Dante.
One of the most curious and characteristic features of language, affecting
both syntax and style, is idiom. The meaning of the word 'idiom' is that
which is peculiar, that which is familiar, the word or expression which
strikes us or comes home to us, which is more readily understood or more
easily remembered. It is a quality which really exists in infinite
degrees, which we turn into differences of kind by applying the term only
to conspicuous and striking examples of words or phrases which have this
quality. It often supersedes the laws of language or the rules of grammar,
or rather is to be regarded as another law of language which is natural and
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