| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: I do not plead his cause. I only want to show you the mote in
my brother's eye: then you can see clearly to take it out.
The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of
paper, nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit,
something straight from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it
to be a thief? He met the question at last, face to face,
wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his forehead. God made
this money--the fresh air, too--for his children's use. He
never made the difference between poor and rich. The Something
who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had
a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: future distinction as a great rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the
day has passed, and after offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs,
Socrates and Phaedrus depart.
There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the
Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of the
Dialogue.
There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato
cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single
subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different
degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example, far
more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean.
Sometimes he asked her:--
"What is the matter with you?"
She replied: "There is nothing the matter with me."
And after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also,
she would add:--
"And you, father--is there anything wrong with you?"
"With me? Nothing," said he.
These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively,
and with so touching an affection, and who had lived so long for
each other now suffered side by side, each on the other's account;
Les Miserables |
