| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: that I found a bitter feeling toward men rise up in my mind
that I never had before. Of course Ginger was very much excited;
she flung up her head with flashing eyes and distended nostrils,
declaring that men were both brutes and blockheads.
"Who talks about blockheads?" said Merrylegs, who just came up
from the old apple-tree, where he had been rubbing himself against
the low branch. "Who talks about blockheads? I believe that is a bad word."
"Bad words were made for bad things," said Ginger, and she told him
what Sir Oliver had said.
"It is all true," said Merrylegs sadly, "and I've seen that about the dogs
over and over again where I lived first; but we won't talk about it here.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: Indeed, I am not, Dionysodorus, he replied; for I love you and am giving
you friendly advice, and, if I could, would persuade you not like a boor to
say in my presence that I desire my beloved, whom I value above all men, to
perish.
I saw that they were getting exasperated with one another, so I made a joke
with him and said: O Ctesippus, I think that we must allow the strangers
to use language in their own way, and not quarrel with them about words,
but be thankful for what they give us. If they know how to destroy men in
such a way as to make good and sensible men out of bad and foolish ones--
whether this is a discovery of their own, or whether they have learned from
some one else this new sort of death and destruction which enables them to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater obstinacy, and as for
cleanliness, the lustre on her brass sauce-pans was the envy and
despair of other servants. She was most economical, and when she ate
she would gather up crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing
should be wasted of the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was
baked especially for her and lasted three weeks.
Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with
a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings,
and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;
A Simple Soul |
