| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: myself seated in a kind of open stone summer-house at table; over my
shoulder a hairy, bearded, and robed presence anointed me from an
authentic shoe-horn; the summer-house was part of the green court of
a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and white imps
discharged against me ineffectual arrows. The picture appears
arbitrary, but I can trace every detail to its source, as Mr. Brock
analysed the dream of Alan Armadale. The summer-house and court were
muddled together out of Billings' ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND; the imps
conveyed from Bagster's PILGRIM'S PROGRESS; the bearded and robed
figure from any one of the thousand Bible pictures; and the shoe-horn
was plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it figured in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Quickly again.
And in playing the lyre, or wrestling, quickness or sharpness are far
better than quietness and slowness?
Yes.
And the same holds in boxing and in the pancratium?
Certainly.
And in leaping and running and in bodily exercises generally, quickness and
agility are good; slowness, and inactivity, and quietness, are bad?
That is evident.
Then, I said, in all bodily actions, not quietness, but the greatest
agility and quickness, is noblest and best?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to
bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young
men they were, too--of good families, and brought up in the
church. Ed Smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been
the head Sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousand
Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, the
baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman
blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--were
the other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they were
all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; they
were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been
What is Man? |
