| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: which you see the Golden River issue, and shall cast into the stream
at its source three drops of holy water, for him and for him only
the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first can
succeed in a second attempt, and if anyone shall cast unholy water
into the river, it will overwhelm him and he will become a black
stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away and
deliberately walked into the center of the hottest flame of the
furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,--a
blaze of intense light,--rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King
of the Golden River had evaporated.
"Oh!" cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney after
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Who petted and called me a brave big fellow
Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom --
Which comes with the years, you know -- soon showed me
The secret of all my glittering childhood,
The broken key to the fairies' castle
That held my life in the fresh, glad season
When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly --
And yet so swiftly! -- there came the knowledge
That the marvellous life I had lived was my life;
That the glorious world I had loved was my world;
And that every man, and every woman,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: of society does not produce the artist's talent; but it assists
or checks its efforts to display itself; it decides whether or
not it shall be successful And it exerts a "natural selection"
between different kinds of talents, stimulating some and starving
others. To make this perfectly clear, we will cite at some length
Taine's brilliant illustration.
The case chosen for illustration is a very simple one,--that of a
state of society in which one of the predominant feelings is
melancholy. This is not an arbitrary supposition, for such a time
has occurred more than once in human history; in Asia, in the
sixth century before Christ, and especially in Europe, from the
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
