| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never
forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his
assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of
crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell
is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes
a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear
was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where
thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,
Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning
such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris
relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "He is enormously rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolino.
"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese (she who had
crushed the comfit-box).
"What does it matter to you, forsooth?" cried the Duke. "With his
money he is as much a prince as I am."
At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by countless
thoughts, and wavered between two decisions. He took counsel with
the gold heaped up by his father, and returned in the evening to
the chamber of death, his whole soul brimming over with hideous
selfishness. He found all his household busy there. "His
lordship" was to lie in state to-morrow; all Ferrara would flock
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
 The Gift of the Magi |