| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: volumes, the while they courted her eager and unashamed. But he
had a feeling that perhaps Verden was not competent to judge. The
standards of this town and of New York were probably vastly
different. James welcomed the chance to enlarge his social
experience. Promptly he accepted the lead offered.
"I'm sure it can't. To present the evidence cogently will take at
least two hours. May I make the argument this evening, if it
please the court, during a call?"
"But I understood you were too busy saving the state--from my
father and my uncle by the way--to have time for a mere woman,"
she parried.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: contraction of his cheek, and eye-socket, the chief towns of some
departments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of
their trouser-straps against the untidiness of their fellow-townsmen.
Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a /lion/, in the person of
Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the time of the
Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only man in
Besancon descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage her
business in the Comte, but very few Spaniards settled there. The
Soulas remained in consequence of their connection with Cardinal
Granvelle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving
Besancon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more
isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to
be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great
cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so
pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of
the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of
sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a
visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said
to know what we can manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of
Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing what language is not. The
study of any foreign language may be made also a study of Comparative
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