| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: senses when my murderers come; they shall not kill me by poison at
least.
"When I came to my senses again - it was the evening of the day
before yesterday - I found a letter on the little table beside my
bed. It was written in French, in a handwriting that I had never
seen before, and there was no signature.
"This strange letter demanded of me that I should write to my
guardian, calmly and clearly, to say that for reasons which I did
not intend to reveal, I had taken my own life. If I did this my
present place of sojourn would be exchanged for a far more agreeable
one, and I would soon be quite free. But if I did not do it, I
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: since the rule of the world can be too dearly bought by the
slaughter of half the world. And if you would pay it, I cannot."
"But this is madness!" I exclaimed. "Your father has no powers
over our earth."
"I would that I could think so, Humphrey. I tell you that he
has powers and that it is his purpose to use them as he has done
before. You, too, he would use, and me."
"And, if so, Yva, we are lords of ourselves. Let us take each
other while we may. Bastin is a priest."
"Lords of ourselves! Why, for ought I know, at this very moment
Oro watches us in his thought and laughs. Only in death,
When the World Shook |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: mentioning. More interesting than either of these, and far more Platonic
in style and thought, is Sir John Eliot's 'Monarchy of Man,' in which the
prisoner of the Tower, no longer able 'to be a politician in the land of
his birth,' turns away from politics to view 'that other city which is
within him,' and finds on the very threshold of the grave that the secret
of human happiness is the mastery of self. The change of government in the
time of the English Commonwealth set men thinking about first principles,
and gave rise to many works of this class...The great original genius of
Swift owes nothing to Plato; nor is there any trace in the conversation or
in the works of Dr. Johnson of any acquaintance with his writings. He
probably would have refuted Plato without reading him, in the same fashion
The Republic |
