| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.
When they got done laughing, Davy says--
'It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed this
much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l,
you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story,
and nobody'll hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong.
What IS your name?'
'Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.'
'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?'
'From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder.
I was born on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and
rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the
twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their
accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old
tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must
be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken
that the taste of the epicure be gratified without inflicting upon him the
attendant penalty of disease.
There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons and
in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and blight; and
diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders of the element
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia:
Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais.
XIX. The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III.
Dante's Reproof of corrupt Prelates.
XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns,
Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente.
Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity. Mantua's Foundation.
XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita.
Malacoda and other Devils.
XXII. Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche.
The Malabranche quarrel.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
