| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a
chaste black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his
chin to his knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she
decided to approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and
kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive
movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step.
He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that
there was a soul before him that needed saving?
Chapter XVII
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: these romances seems but dross.
These writers would retort (if I take them properly) that this was
very true; that it was the same with themselves and other persons
of (what they call) the artistic temperament; that in this we were
exceptional, and should apparently be ashamed of ourselves; but
that our works must deal exclusively with (what they call) the
average man, who was a prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to
all but the paltriest considerations. I accept the issue. We can
only know others by ourselves. The artistic temperament (a plague
on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen,
or it would make us incapable of writing novels; and the average
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: A mother casts on a delirious child;
And she began: "All things whate'er they be
Have order among themselves, and this is form,
That makes the universe resemble God.
Here do the higher creatures see the footprints
Of the Eternal Power, which is the end
Whereto is made the law already mentioned.
In the order that I speak of are inclined
All natures, by their destinies diverse,
More or less near unto their origin;
Hence they move onward unto ports diverse
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
