| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: art-sense in the person addressed, the more had better be left to it.
Now in Japan the public is singularly artistic. In fact, the
artistic appreciation of the masses there is something astonishing
to us, accustomed to our immense intellectual differences between
man and man. Sketches are thus peculiarly fitting to such a land.
Besides, there is a quiet modesty about the sketch which is itself
taking. To attempt the complete even in a fractional bit of the
cosmos, like a picture, has in it a difficulty akin to the logical
one of proving a universal negative. The possibilities of failure
are enormously increased, and failure is less forgiven for the
assumption. Art might perhaps not unwisely follow the example of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Ah, that I had my lady at this bay,
To kiss and clip me till I run away!
XII.
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare;
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and age is tame.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: very little, light, which, however, rapidly increased. We were the
victors, we the North, and we had gone upon our way with songs and
rejoicing--able to forget, because we were the victors. We had our
victory; let the vanquished have their memory. But here was the cry of
the vanquished, coming after forty years. It was the time which at first
bewildered me; Juno had seen the war, Juno's bitterness I could
comprehend, even if I could not comprehend her freedom in expressing it,
but the poetess could not be more than a year or two older than I was;
she had come after it was all over. Why should she prolong such memories
and feelings? But my light increased as I remembered she had not written
this for us, and that if she had not seen the flames of war, she had seen
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