| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: These were the ladies whom Emma found herself very frequently
able to collect; and happy was she, for her father's sake,
in the power; though, as far as she was herself concerned,
it was no remedy for the absence of Mrs. Weston. She was delighted
to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with
herself for contriving things so well; but the quiet prosings
of three such women made her feel that every evening so spent
was indeed one of the long evenings she had fearfully anticipated.
As she sat one morning, looking forward to exactly such a close
of the present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Goddard, requesting,
in most respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Smith with her;
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: may fill up the sketch of Socrates, lest, as Phaedrus says, the argument
should be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (Compare Symp.,
Apol., Euthyphro.)
He next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as
the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a
whole, and which may also be regarded (compare Soph.) as the process of the
mind talking with herself. The latter view has probably led Plato to the
paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem also to be
doing an injustice to himself. For the two cannot be fairly compared in
the manner which Plato suggests. The contrast of the living and dead word,
and the example of Socrates, which he has represented in the form of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: After his books, to flush his blood with air,
Then to his books again. My lady's cousin,
Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon,
Drove in upon the student once or twice,
Ran a Malayan muck against the times,
Had golden hopes for France and all mankind,
Answer'd all queries touching those at home
With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile,
And fain had haled him out into the world,
And air'd him there: his nearer friend would say
`Screw not the chord too sharply lest it snap.'
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