| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: officers, one boy, and the steward, a mulatto who an-
swered to the name of Abraham. Mrs. Beard was an old
woman, with a race all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter
apple, and the figure of a young girl. She caught sight
of me once, sewing on a button, and insisted on having
my shirts to repair. This was something different from
the captains' wives I had known on board crack clippers.
When I brought her the shirts, she said: 'And the
socks? They want mending, I am sure, and John's--
Captain Beard's--things are all in order now. I would
be glad of something to do.' Bless the old woman. She
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: go about as hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a
Russian or a German or an Italian - I even like to look at a
Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything
that ain't indelicate - but LOOKING don't cure the hunger - what
you want is talk."
"Well, there's England, Sandy - the English district of heaven."
"Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the
heavenly domain. As long as you run across Englishmen born this
side of three hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute
you get back of Elizabeth's time the language begins to fog up, and
the further back you go the foggier it gets. I had some talk with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even
the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets;--because they were
good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters,
and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked
myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was,
neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both;
and I made answer to myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I
was.
This inquisition has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most
dangerous kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies. And I am
called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom
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