| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: hung round with Fruits in worsted, of your own working--
LADY TEAZLE. O horrible!--horrible!--don't put me in mind of it!
SIR PETER. Yes, yes Madam and your daily occupation to inspect
the Dairy, superintend the Poultry, make extracts from the Family
Receipt-book, and comb your aunt Deborah's Lap Dog.
LADY TEAZLE. Abominable!
SIR PETER. Yes Madam--and what were your evening amusements?
to draw Patterns for Ruffles, which you hadn't the materials to make--
play Pope Joan with the Curate--to read a sermon to your Aunt--
or be stuck down to an old Spinet to strum your father to sleep
after a Fox Chase.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: my sage lore[13] in less than no time, and your wine will taste the
sweeter.
[10] "Il." xxiii. 335; Plat. "Ion," 537.
[11] Lit. "yield him the reins with his hands."
[12] "Il." xi.630: "And set out a leek savourer of drink" (Purves).
Plat. "Ion," 538 C.
[13] "My culinary skill."
Here Charmides exclaimed: Good sirs, let me explain. Niceratus is
anxious to go home, redolent of onions, so that his fair lady may
persuade herself, it never entered into anybody's head to kiss her
lord.[14]
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course
of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I
refer to him only as the type of a class.
The weapons with which we have gained our most important
victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father
to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the
turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of
many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought
field. The very winds blew the Indian's cornfield into the
meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to
follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself
Walking |
