| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: for eight dollars a week. Lest factories quote this
wage by way of vindication, I will add that the girl
bad worked for five years to reach that supreme ele-
vation of remuneration, beginning at $1.50 per week.
Kerner's father was worth a couple of millions
He was willing to stand for art, but he drew the
line at the factory girl. So Kerner disinherited his
father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived
on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner.
Farroni had the artistic soul and a line of credit for
painters and poets, nicely adjusted. Sometimes Ker-
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: them in return is far from being equally clear. If they give everything
and we give nothing, that must be an affair of business in which we have
very greatly the advantage of them.
EUTHYPHRO: And do you imagine, Socrates, that any benefit accrues to the
gods from our gifts?
SOCRATES: But if not, Euthyphro, what is the meaning of gifts which are
conferred by us upon the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: What else, but tributes of honour; and, as I was just now
saying, what pleases them?
SOCRATES: Piety, then, is pleasing to the gods, but not beneficial or dear
to them?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a
worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as
he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of
instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of
Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for
the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its
legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The
cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was
tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and
legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that
might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
