| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: and more the delegates of that very class which is most opposed to
Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to
express his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the
last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect
the local interests of his constituents. And the great majority
of those constituents are small houseowners--the poorer portion of
the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like
a sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next
election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the
Government to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good
care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do too much,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: the Mast."
Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the classic of the sea,
not because there was anything extraordinary about Dana, but for
the precise contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, normal
man, clear-seeing, hard-headed, controlled, fitted with adequate
education to go about the work. He brought a trained mind to put
down with untroubled vision what he saw of a certain phase of
work-a-day life. There was nothing brilliant nor fly-away about
him. He was not a genius. His heart never rode his head. He was
neither overlorded by sentiment nor hag-ridden by imagination.
Otherwise he might have been guilty of the beautiful exaggerations
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: will not wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his
ship, stand nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough
knowledge of his craft.
There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships. The profitable
ship will carry a large load through all the hazards of the
weather, and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from
berth to berth without ballast. There is a point of perfection in
a ship as a worker when she is spoken of as being able to SAIL
without ballast. I have never met that sort of paragon myself, but
I have seen these paragons advertised amongst ships for sale. Such
excess of virtue and good-nature on the part of a ship always
The Mirror of the Sea |
