| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: fatal token down. "Reach it to me," said the reverend churchman.
The clerk and the sexton equally declined the perilous office,
and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with
his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the
champion that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage
of defiance. But the champion was as much ashamed to face
Bernard Gilpin as the officials of the church had been to
displace his pledge of combat.
The date of the following story is about the latter years of
Queen Elizabeth's reign; and the events took place in Liddesdale,
a hilly and pastoral district of Roxburghshire, which, on a part
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: Italians when they are fair. It is exquisite, especially under an
artificial light. When I read the fantastical portrait of Colonel
Oudet sketched by Charles Nodier, I found my own sensations in every
one of his elegant phrases. Italian, then, as were most of the
officers of his regiment, which had, in fact, been borrowed by the
Emperor from Eugene's army, my colonel was a tall man, at least eight
or nine inches above the standard, and was admirably proportioned--a
little stout perhaps, but prodigiously powerful, active, and clean-
limbed as a greyhound. His black hair in abundant curls showed up his
complexion, as white as a woman's; he had small hands, a shapely foot,
a pleasant mouth, and an aquiline nose delicately formed, of which the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: 11. CHANG YU. The list closes with a commentator of no
great originality perhaps, but gifted with admirable powers of
lucid exposition. His commentator is based on that of Ts`ao
Kung, whose terse sentences he contrives to expand and develop in
masterly fashion. Without Chang Yu, it is safe to say that much
of Ts`ao Kung's commentary would have remained cloaked in its
pristine obscurity and therefore valueless. His work is not
mentioned in the Sung history, the T`UNG K`AO, or the YU HAI, but
it finds a niche in the T`UNG CHIH, which also names him as the
author of the "Lives of Famous Generals." [46]
It is rather remarkable that the last-named four should all
The Art of War |
