| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: facts in music. All other arts present to the mind a definite
creation; those of music are indefinite--infinite. We are compelled to
accept the ideas of the poet, the painter's picture, the sculptor's
statue; but music each one can interpret at the will of his sorrow or
his gladness, his hope or his despair. While other arts restrict our
mind by fixing it on a predestined object, music frees it to roam over
all nature which it alone has the power of expressing. You shall hear
how I interpret Rossini's /Mose/."
She leaned across to the Frenchman to speak to him, without being
overheard.
"Moses is the liberator of an enslaved race!" said she. "Remember
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: "'I'll have to close you up till you do,' says the constable.
"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the
landlord about it.
"'Oh, you won't stand no show in Fisher Hill,' says he. 'Dr. Hoskins,
the only doctor here, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they won't
allow no fake doctor to practice in town.'
"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've got a State peddler's
license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.'
"I went to the Mayor's office the next morning and they told me he
hadn't showed up yet. They didn't know when he'd be down. So Doc
Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpson-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: place after a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over
the adventure for the following day, and I returned to the
welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I
perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace
of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to
shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I
would make the descent without further waste of time, and started
out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite
and aluminium.
`Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well,
but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she
The Time Machine |
