| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: yeoman, with such fatal certainty and force that the hilt made a
hollow sound against the breast-bone, and the double-edged point
split the very heart of his victim. Harry Wakefield fell and
expired with a single groan. His assassin next seized the
bailiff by the collar, and offered the bloody poniard to his
throat, whilst dread and surprise rendered the man incapable of
defence.
"It were very just to lay you peside him," he said, "but the
blood of a pase pickthank shall never mix on my father's dirk,
with that of a brave man."
As he spoke, he cast the man from him with so much force that he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: went to sleep and had nothing to say?
ION: No indeed; no more than the other.
SOCRATES: And if I am not mistaken, you never met with any one among
flute-players or harp-players or singers to the harp or rhapsodes who was
able to discourse of Olympus or Thamyras or Orpheus, or Phemius the
rhapsode of Ithaca, but was at a loss when he came to speak of Ion of
Ephesus, and had no notion of his merits or defects?
ION: I cannot deny what you say, Socrates. Nevertheless I am conscious in
my own self, and the world agrees with me in thinking that I do speak
better and have more to say about Homer than any other man. But I do not
speak equally well about others--tell me the reason of this.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: another, thou and I.
'One more stroke, only one! A good stroke! a straight stroke!
a strong stroke!' and, drawing himself to his full height, with
a wild heart-shaking shout, he with both hands began to whirl
the axe round his head till it looked like a circle of flaming steel.
Then, suddenly, with awful force he brought it down straight
on to the crown of the mass of sacred stone. A shower of sparks
flew up, and such was the almost superhuman strength of the blow,
that the massive marble split with a rending sound into a score
of pieces, whilst of Inkosi-kaas there remained but some fragments
of steel and a fibrous rope of shattered horn that had been the
Allan Quatermain |
