| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: dimly lighted, and where the reflection of the candle seems
rather to lose itself in the deep obscurity of the glass than to
be reflected back again into the apartment, That space of inky
darkness seems to be a field for Fancy to play her revels in.
She may call up other features to meet us, instead of the
reflection of our own; or, as in the spells of Hallowe'en, which
we learned in childhood, some unknown form may be seen peeping
over our shoulder. In short, when I am in a ghost-seeing humour,
I make my handmaiden draw the green curtains over the mirror
before I go into the room, so that she may have the first shock
of the apparition, if there be any to be seen, But, to tell you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: "Henri," said Brigitte to the man-servant, "take monsieur down to the
porter and tell him to do the errand I told him about just now, and to
take monsieur to his own door, and be very careful of him."
"Careful of him!" echoed the old man. "Do you take me for a trunk,
madame, or a bit of cracked china?"
Seeing that she had got her man fairly to the door, Brigitte allowed
herself to turn upon him.
"What I say, monsieur, is for your good. You must allow me to observe
that you have not an agreeable nature."
"Careful of him! careful of him!" repeated the old man. "Don't you
know, madame, that by the use of such words you may get people put
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: always exist in some form as a community of persons desirous of
pushing their culture to the highest pitch they are capable of, not as
solitary students reading in seclusion, but as members of a body of
individuals all pursuing culture, talking culture, thinking culture,
above all, criticizing culture. If such persons are to read and talk
and criticize to any purpose, they must know the world outside the
university at least as well as the shopkeeper in the High Street does.
And this is just what they do not know at present. You may say of
them, paraphrasing Mr. Kipling, "What do they know of Plato that only
Plato know?" If our universities would exclude everybody who had not
earned a living by his or her own exertions for at least a couple of
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