| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: in the attitude of the two subjects upon personality. Emotionally,
science appeals to nobody, art to everybody. Now the emotions
constitute the larger part of that complex bundle of ideas which we
know as self. A thought which is not tinged to some extent with
feeling is not only not personal; properly speaking, it is not even
distinctively human, but cosmical. In its lofty superiority to man,
science is unpersonal rather than impersonal. Art, on the other hand,
is a familiar spirit. Through the windows of the senses she finds
her way into the very soul of man, and makes for herself a home there.
But it is to his humanity, not to his individuality, that she
whispers, for she speaks in that universal tongue which all can
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: down HE goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and
brake HIS neck, and then there's another elected, and
another and another and still another, till the material
is all used up; and when you come to figure up results,
you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whip-
ped; and as a PICTURE, of living, raging, roaring battle,
sho! why, it's pale and noiseless -- just ghosts scuffling
in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary
get out of the mightiest spectacle? -- the burning of
Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would
merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: automobile in which Bella lolled red-faced when they drove into
town.
As Ben Westerveld had prospered, his shrewish wife had reaped her
benefits. Ben was not the selfish type of farmer who insists on
twentieth- century farm implements and medieval household
equipment. He had added a bedroom here, a cool summer kitchen
there, an icehouse, a commodious porch, a washing machine, even a
bathroom. But Bella remained unplacated. Her face was set
toward the city. And slowly, surely, the effect of thirty years
of nagging was beginning to tell on Ben Westerveld. He was the
finer metal, but she was the heavier, the coarser. She beat him
One Basket |
