| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: meanness of a hard struggle for bread. Even the image
of her husband and of her children seemed to glide away
from her into the gray twilight; it was her father's
face alone that she saw, as though he had come to see
her, always quiet and big, as she had seen him last, but
with something more august and tender in his aspect.
She slipped his folded letter between the two buttons
of her plain black bodice, and leaning her forehead
against a window-pane remained there till dusk, per-
fectly motionless, giving him all the time she could
spare. Gone! Was it possible? My God, was it possi-
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: And tell the Father of us all where I have fallen
short;
And there will be a lot of wrong I never meant
to do,
A lot of smudges on my sheet that He will have
to view.
And little chance for heavenly bliss, up there,
will I command,
Unless the Father smiles and says: "My boy,
I understand."
PEOPLE LIKED HIM
A Heap O' Livin' |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: make or keep a friend may profitably study. (Compare Bacon, Essay on
Friendship; Cic. de Amicitia.)
LYSIS, OR FRIENDSHIP
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator, Menexenus,
Hippothales, Lysis, Ctesippus.
SCENE: A newly-erected Palaestra outside the walls of Athens.
I was going from the Academy straight to the Lyceum, intending to take the
outer road, which is close under the wall. When I came to the postern gate
Lysis |
