| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: "I have the will to friendship. Is there any particular thing which I can
do to help?" I should answer him:
"Just now, or in any days to come, should you be tempted to remind us
that we did not protest against the martyrdom of Belgium, that we were a
bit slow in coming into the war,--oh, don't utter that reproach! Go back
to your own past; look, for instance, at your guarantee to Denmark, at
Lord John Russell's words: 'Her Majesty could not see with indifference a
military occupation of Holstein'--and then see what England shirked; and
read that scathing sentence spoken to her ambassador in Russia: 'Then we
may dismiss any idea that England will fight on a point of honor.' We had
made you no such guarantee. We were three thousand miles away--how far
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: dilute my ink, - then fetch'd sand and seal-wax. - It was all one;
I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, and wrote again. -
LE DIABLE L'EMPORTE! said I, half to myself, - I cannot write this
self-same letter, throwing the pen down despairingly as I said it.
As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced with the most
respectful carriage up to the table, and making a thousand
apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told me he had a
letter in his pocket wrote by a drummer in his regiment to a
corporal's wife, which he durst say would suit the occasion.
I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour. - Then
prithee, said I, let me see it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: rightness of his work and ambition. For to disagree with three-
fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first
elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments
of spiritual doubt.
As regards the ideas these young men brought to the regeneration of
English art, we may see at the base of their artistic creations a
desire for a deeper spiritual value to be given to art as well as a
more decorative value.
Pre-Raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the
early Italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to
the facile abstractions of Raphael, they found a stronger realism
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