| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: and his great power of acquiring facts. So he was ready, like the wise
virgins of parable. Bertie and Billy did not put one in mind of virgins:
although they had burned considerable midnight oil, it had not been to
throw light upon Philosophy 4. In them the mere word Heracleitos had
raised a chill no later than yesterday,--the chill of the unknown. They
had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting
by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but
seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung
away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of
examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the
sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: at the side, it streamed forth at the top. I had presence of mind; near me
was a rock; I stood upon it. The fiery torrent was vomited out and
streamed on either side of me. And through that long and terrible night I
stood there alone upon that rock, the glowing, fiery lava on every hand--a
monument of the long-suffering and tender providence of the Lord, who
spared me that I might this day testify in your ears of Him.
"Now, my dear friends, let us deduce the lessons that are to be learnt from
this narrative.
"Firstly: let us never commit suicide. The man is a fool, my friends,
that man is insane, my friends, who would leave this earth, my friends.
Here are joys innumerable, such as it hath not entered into the heart of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: that the great pinch really came. If I had counted on
what it would give me to find myself alone with Miles,
I speedily perceived, at least, that it would give me a measure.
No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions
as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing
Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates.
Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements,
and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought
my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash.
It was a tighter place still than I had yet turned round in;
all the more that, for the first time, I could see in
|
