| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have
inherited many objects of importance. There was no enviable
bric-a-brac, with its provoking legend of cheapness, in the room
in which I had seen her. Such a fact as that suggested bareness,
but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental
interest I had always taken in the early movements of my
countrymen as visitors to Europe. When Americans went abroad
in 1820 there was something romantic, almost heroic in it,
as compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour,
when photography and other conveniences have annihilated surprise.
Miss Bordereau sailed with her family on a tossing brig,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable
inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there
had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at
the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the
Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was
simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says (Odyssey), and
strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting
to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a
master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be
praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should
be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris:
"Don't you want to come up and play cards with me to-night? We
haven't had a game in over a week?"
"How did she know?" thought Condy to himself--"how could she
tell?" Aloud, he said:
"I can't join you fellows, after all. 'Despatch from the managing
editor.' Some special detail or other."
|