| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such -- This whole
earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart,
think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star,
the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This
which you put seems to me not to be the most important question.
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows
and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs
can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want
most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the
post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: "So that he can't give himself up to his beautiful imagination?"
"He's beset, badgered, bothered - he's pulled to pieces on the
pretext of being applauded. People expect him to give them his
time, his golden time, who wouldn't themselves give five shillings
for one of his books."
"Five? I'd give five thousand!"
"Give your sympathy - give your forbearance. Two-thirds of those
who approach him only do it to advertise themselves."
"Why it's too bad!" the girl exclaimed with the face of an angel.
"It's the first time I was ever called crude!" she laughed.
I followed up my advantage. "There's a lady with him now who's a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Confusedly they fought, and sometimes ill: but their corpses piled
the breach and filled the trench for us, and over their corpses we
step on to what should be to us an easy victory--what may be to us,
yet, a shameful ruin.
For if we be, as we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the
light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour? What
if the light which is in us should become darkness? For myself,
when I look upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern
times, so far from boasting of that liberty in which I delight--and
to keep which I freely, too, could die--I rather say, in fear and
trembling, God help us on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to
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