| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: full, too, flowing like a player's lines. With the right cue he could
recite instantly: "An important application of this principle, with
obvious reference to Heracleitos, occurs in Aristotle, who says--" He
could do this with the notes anywhere. I am sure you appreciate Oscar
and his great power of acquiring facts. So he was ready, like the wise
virgins of parable. Bertie and Billy did not put one in mind of virgins:
although they had burned considerable midnight oil, it had not been to
throw light upon Philosophy 4. In them the mere word Heracleitos had
raised a chill no later than yesterday,--the chill of the unknown. They
had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting
by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite "false note."
--Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.
II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: obscurer recesses of the human heart. Such are the poems of
democracy. The principle of equality does not then destroy all
the subjects of poetry: it renders them less numerous, but more
vast.
Chapter XVIII: Of The Inflated Style Of American Writers And
Orators
I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally
treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all
ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt
to become inflated as soon as they attempt a more poetical
diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end of a
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