| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: "When?" I asked.
She dealt in chords. "I wish I COULD play this!" she said.
"Midnight."
She gave her attention to the music for a time.
"You may have to wait."
"I'll wait."
She brought her playing to an end by--as school boys
say--"stashing it up."
"I can't play to-night," she said, standing up and meeting my
eyes. "I wanted to give you a parting voluntary."
"Was that Wagner, Beatrice?" asked Lady Osprey looking up from
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: has a little question to which he wants Theaetetus or Theodorus (or
whichever of the company would not be 'donkey' to the rest) to find an
answer. Without further preface, but at the same time apologizing for his
eagerness, he asks, 'What is knowledge?' Theodorus is too old to answer
questions, and begs him to interrogate Theaetetus, who has the advantage of
youth.
Theaetetus replies, that knowledge is what he learns of Theodorus, i.e.
geometry and arithmetic; and that there are other kinds of knowledge--
shoemaking, carpentering, and the like. But Socrates rejoins, that this
answer contains too much and also too little. For although Theaetetus has
enumerated several kinds of knowledge, he has not explained the common
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Surveyor Pue -- "I will"
On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It
was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing
to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold
repetition, the long extent from the front door of the
Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again. Great were
the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers
and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully
lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.
Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the
The Scarlet Letter |
