| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: proposed then and there to perform with her; and as, since passing
Ballan the girl had thought of nothing else; as her desire had been
carefully sustained, and augmented by the warm movements of the
animal, she replied harshly to the vicar, "if you talk thus I will get
down." Then the good vicar continued his gentle requests so well that
on reaching the wood of Azay the girl wished to get down, and the
priest got down there too, for it was not across a horse that this
discussion could be finished. Then the virtuous maiden ran into the
thickest part of the wood to get away from the vicar, calling out,
"Oh, you wicked man, you shan't know where I am."
The mule arrived in a glade where the grass was good, the girl tumbled
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: supposed to be derived from a single original. The version is very
faithful, and is a remarkable monument of Cicero's skill in managing the
difficult and intractable Greek. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, he also
refers to the Timaeus, which, speaking in the person of Velleius the
Epicurean, he severely criticises.
The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of the
silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends to about thirty
pages of the book, and is thirty times the length of the original. It is
surprising that this voluminous work should have found a translator (Thomas
Taylor, a kindred spirit, who was himself a Neo-Platonist, after the
fashion, not of the fifth or sixteenth, but of the nineteenth century
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: of red polished granite. A table laid out for four occupied very
little space. The floor inlaid in two kinds of wood in a bizarre
pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like still water.
Before very long Dona Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down
around the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically
sudden ring at the front door stilled our incipient animation.
Dona Rita looked at us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were,
with suspicion. "How did he know I was here?" she whispered after
looking at the card which was brought to her. She passed it to
Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who made a faint grimace, dropped it
on the table-cloth, and only whispered to me, "A journalist from
The Arrow of Gold |
