| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: seven in the evening. No one is there at that hour. The place
isn't patronized much, and it shuts up at eight. You and I can go
there and have dinner at six, say, and watch for them to come."
Then they set to work at their letters.
"Now," said Condy, "we must have these sound perfectly natural,
because if either of these people smell the smallest kind of a
rat, you won't catch 'em. You must write not as YOU would write,
but as you think THEY would. This is an art, a kind of fiction,
don't you see? We must imagine a certain character, and write a
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: [1] Lit. "with each age."; see Plut. "Lycurg." 25; Hesychius, {s. u.
irinies}; "Hell." VI. iv. 17; V. iv. 13.
[2] Reading after Cobet, {en touto}.
As to food,[3] his ordinance allowed them so much as, while not
inducing repletion, should guard them from actual want. And, in fact,
there are many exceptional[4] dishes in the shape of game supplied
from the hunting field. Or, as a substitute for these, rich men will
occasionally garnish the feast with wheaten loaves. So that from
beginning to end, till the mess breaks up, the common board is never
stinted for viands, nor yet extravagantly furnished.
[3] See Plut. "Lycurg." 12 (Clough, i. 97).
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: he told us an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would
repeat to Socrates, so that he may help us to judge whether it will satisfy
his requirements or not.
CRITIAS: I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.
TIMAEUS: I quite approve.
CRITIAS: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is
certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the
seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather,
Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the
story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us.
There were of old, he said, great and marvellous actions of the Athenian
|
