| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: not a name that you will find here. It belongs to North Carolina."
I smiled and explained that North Carolina Fannings were useless to me.
"And, if I may be so bold, how well you are acquainted with my errand!"
I cannot say that my hostess smiled, that would be too definite; but I
can say that she did not permit herself to smile, and that she let me see
this repression. "Yes," she said, "we are acquainted with your errand,
though not with its motive."
I sat silent, thinking of the Exchange.
My hostess now gave me her own account of why all things were known to
all people in this town. "The distances in your Northern cities are
greater, and their population is much greater. There are but few of us in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: But when we arrived, he was afraid to come in--to come up here.
Captain Lovelock is so modest, you know--in spite of all the success
he had in America. He will tell you about the success he had in America;
it quite makes up for the defeat of the British army in the Revolution.
They were defeated in the Revolution, the British, were n't they?
I always told him so, but he insists they were not. 'How do we
come to be free, then?' I always ask him; 'I suppose you admit
that we are free.' Then he becomes personal and says that I am
free enough, certainly. But it 's the general fact I mean; I wish you
would tell him about the general fact. I think he would believe you,
because he knows you know a great deal about history and all that.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: statement that the heroes of the Troika belong to an order of
men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. 304.) Most
assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son of
Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary
mortals, such as might have been seen and conversed with by
the poet's grandfather. They belong to an inferior order of
gods, according to the peculiar anthropomorphism of the
Greeks, in which deity and humanity are so closely mingled
that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and the
other ends. Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the
gentle Aphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
