| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop BEHIND me. I was tangled good
now. That was somebody else's whoop, or else I was
turned around.
I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop
again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place;
it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept
answering, till by and by it was in front of me again,
and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head
down-stream, and I was all right if that was Jim and
not some other raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: now," answered Mr. Burns.
I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon
the whole I was relieved to hear that he had not
died in the bed which was now to be mine. I
pointed out to the chief mate that what I really
wanted to know was where he had buried his late
captain.
Mr. Burns said that it was at the entrance to the
gulf. A roomy grave; a sufficient answer. But
the mate, overcoming visibly something within him
--something like a curious reluctance to believe in
The Shadow Line |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: the want of simplicity or delicacy in poetry, the want of political
freedom, which is the true atmosphere of public speaking, in oratory. The
ways of life were luxurious and commonplace. Philosophy had become
extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. At length it
ceased to exist. It had spread words like plaster over the whole field of
knowledge. It had grown ascetic on one side, mystical on the other.
Neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature. There was no
sense of beauty either in language or in art. The Greek world became
vacant, barbaric, oriental. No one had anything new to say, or any
conviction of truth. The age had no remembrance of the past, no power of
understanding what other ages thought and felt. The Catholic faith had
|
