| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: to France, to Germany, to Italy, in which countries, not counting
his important stay in England, so many of the too few years
of Aspern's career were spent. We were glad to think at least
that in all our publishings (some people consider I believe
that we have overdone them), we had only touched in passing
and in the most discreet manner on Miss Bordereau's connection.
Oddly enough, even if we had had the material (and we often
wondered what had become of it), it would have been the most
difficult episode to handle.
The gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the class
which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a
plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue
to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have
given you the pattern.
MENO: Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he, who desires
the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet says, and I
say too--
'Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining
them.'
SOCRATES: And does he who desires the honourable also desire the good?
MENO: Certainly.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: all about him. He saw Bess's face white now with dark, frightened
eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and he followed suit. The golden
glare vanished; all was black; then came the splitting crack and
the infernal din of echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and
pressed them tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his
shoulder, and hid her eyes.
Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and
shafts of lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley
with a broken radiance; and the cracking shots followed each
other swiftly till the echoes blended in one fearful, deafening
Riders of the Purple Sage |
