| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: beginning to take in the situation, "shure she could have a day at home as
aisy as the foinest lady, and proud indeed she'd be to have it with your
little self for the guest of honor."
"I would like to bring Rudolph and Mabel, Patrick."
"And what should hinder, miss?"
"And I'd like to have it an all-day-at-home, say from eleven in the morning
until five in the afternoon, and not make just a little call, Patrick."
"Of course, miss, a regular long day, with your donkey put into a stall in the
barn, and yourselves and the donkey biding for the best dinner we can give
ye."
"And I'd like to have you there, Patrick, because we might not feel AT HOME
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: get, and what is the quality of a good work of art.
Now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by
which I mean the age and country in which he is born. All good
art, as I said before, has nothing to do with any particular
century; but this universality is the quality of the work of art;
the conditions that produce that quality are different. And what,
I think, you should do is to realise completely your age in order
completely to abstract yourself from it; remembering that if you
are an artist at all, you will be not the mouthpiece of a century,
but the master of eternity, that all art rests on a principle, and
that mere temporal considerations are no principle at all; and that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with
cursings. He said he had cursed his soul to rags;
and yet he would not get down from his horse, neither
would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until
he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this ac-
count. It appeared, by what I could piece together
of the unprofane fragments of his statement, that he
had chanced upon Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning,
and been told that if he would make a short cut across
the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades, he
could head off a company of travelers who would be
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
