| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: mysteriously in; chewed, placed on the boy's eyes, dropped in
his ears (see Hamlet) and stuck up his nostrils; as he did
this, the weird doctor partly smothered the patient with his
hand; and by about 2 A.M. he was in a deep sleep, and from
that time he showed no symptom of dementia whatever. The
medicine (says Lafaele) is principally used for the wholesale
slaughter of families; he himself feared last night that his
dose was fatal; only one other person, on this island, knows
the secret; and she, Lafaele darkly whispers, has abused it.
This remarkable tree we must try to identify.
The man-of-war doctor came up to-day, gave us a strait-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: give them an advantage over other nations in war, would have discovered
this one. And even if they had not, still these professors of the art
would certainly not have failed to discover that of all the Hellenes the
Lacedaemonians have the greatest interest in such matters, and that a
master of the art who was honoured among them would be sure to make his
fortune among other nations, just as a tragic poet would who is honoured
among ourselves; which is the reason why he who fancies that he can write a
tragedy does not go about itinerating in the neighbouring states, but
rushes hither straight, and exhibits at Athens; and this is natural.
Whereas I perceive that these fighters in armour regard Lacedaemon as a
sacred inviolable territory, which they do not touch with the point of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the command of the divisional machine-guns. After the Armistice he
tried frantically to get home, but some complication or
misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now--there
was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why
he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside,
and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be
reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids
and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of
the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new
tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the
The Great Gatsby |
