| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the
ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will
know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become
acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who
takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that,
but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and
when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this
world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English.
This is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to
do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has
just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: beginning of their conversation, so she smiled and said, `If your
Majesty will only tell me the right way to begin, I'll do it as
well as I can.'
`But I don't want it done at all!' groaned the poor Queen.
`I've been a-dressing myself for the last two hours.'
It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if
she had got some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully
untidy. `Every single thing's crooked,' Alice thought to
herself, `and she's all over pins!--may I put your shawl
straight for you?' she added aloud.
`I don't know what's the matter with it!' the Queen said, in a
Through the Looking-Glass |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: childhood, and that are associated with our homeliest and deepest
emotions; while words of the second class--usually acquired
somewhat later in life and employed in sedate abstract
discourse--have an intellectual rather than an emotional function
to fulfil. Their original significations, the physical metaphors
involved in them, which are perhaps still somewhat apparent to
the Frenchman, are to us wholly non-existent. Nothing but the
derivative or metaphysical signification remains. No physical
image of a man stepping over a boundary is presented to our minds
by the word transgress, nor in using the word comprehension do we
picture to ourselves any manual act of grasping. It is to this
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
