| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus of
thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been
part of the entertainment of his honeymoon. He had never been
so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue.
The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at
last expired, and he asked himself what he should do now.
Mrs. Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he
should join her in the Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor
to return to France. The simplest thing was to repair
to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer.
Newman made his way to the great seaport and secured his berth;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: ground under the city walls; but in the course of time Meleager
was angered as even a wise man will sometimes be. He was incensed
with his mother Althaea, and therefore stayed at home with his
wedded wife fair Cleopatra, who was daughter of Marpessa daughter
of Euenus, and of Ides the man then living. He it was who took
his bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessa's sake;
her father and mother then named her Alcyone, because her mother
had mourned with the plaintive strains of the halcyon-bird when
Phoebus Apollo had carried her off. Meleager, then, stayed at
home with Cleopatra, nursing the anger which he felt by reason of
his mother's curses. His mother, grieving for the death of her
The Iliad |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by the wit of man.
With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words newly imported from a
foreign language, and the like, in which art has imitated nature, 'words
are not made but grow.' Nor do we attribute to them a supernatural origin.
The law which regulates them is like the law which governs the circulation
of the blood, or the rising of the sap in trees; the action of it is
uniform, but the result, which appears in the superficial forms of men and
animals or in the leaves of trees, is an endless profusion and variety.
The laws of vegetation are invariable, but no two plants, no two leaves of
the forest are precisely the same. The laws of language are invariable,
but no two languages are alike, no two words have exactly the same meaning.
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