| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: must look at and admire, and think her a fine, brave, merry girl. And
then there is your face, which is quite different - I never knew how
different till to-day. You cannot see yourself, and that is why you do
not understand; but it was for the love of your face that she took you
up and was so good to you. And everybody in the world would do the
same."
"Everybody?" says she.
"Every living soul?" said I.
"Ah, then, that will be why the soldiers at the castle took me up!" she
cried,
"Barbara has been teaching you to catch me," said I.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: instance, or at any rate one-sided,[69] seeing that what they look
upon as lawful with us is scandalous.[70] Indeed, it strikes me that
this vaunted battle-order would seem to argue some mistrust on their
part who adopt it--a suspicion that their bosom friends, once
separated from them, may forget to behave as brave men should. But the
men of Lacedaemon, holding that "if a man but lay his hand upon the
body and for lustful purpose, he shall thereby forfeit claim to what
is beautiful and noble"--do, in the spirit of their creed, contrive to
mould and fashion their "beloved ones" to such height of virtue,[71]
that should these find themselves drawn up with foreigners, albeit no
longer side by side with their own lovers,[72] conscience will make
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: fellow, "which he may not so easily escape--should he succeed
in escaping our two good swords. Consider, for example, what
chance he will have, coming unexpectedly into the chamber of----"
I would have given much to have heard the balance of that conversation
that I might have been warned of the perils that lay ahead,
but fate intervened, and just at the very instant of all other
instants that I would not have elected to do it, I sneezed.
The Warlord of Mars |
