| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: are people capable of a love terrible in its strength; but I
never knew such a case that some one did not consider its
expediency as "a match" in the light of dollars and cents. As
for heroines, of course I have seen beautiful women, and good as
fair. The most beautiful is delicate and pure enough for a type
of the Madonna, and has a heart almost as warm and holy. (Very
pure blood is in her veins, too, if you care about blood.) But at
home they call her Tode for a nickname; all we can do, she will
sing, and sing through her nose; and on washing-days she often
cooks the dinner, and scolds wholesomely, if the tea-napkins are
not in order. Now, what is anybody to do with a heroine like
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: 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
their foot; but they make a circuit of the neighbouring states, and would
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: to do her more harm than he had dreamed...
Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he did
desperately want to prevent her marrying Owen Leath. He
tried to get away from the feeling, to isolate and
exteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it was made
of; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, the
instinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguing
can make "straight." His tramp, prolonged as it was, carried
him no nearer to enlightenment; and after trudging through
two or three sallow mud-stained villages he turned about and
wearily made his way back to Givre. As he walked up the
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