| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: some time after the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,'
alone and under the staggering weight of all the responsibilities
connected with the position. When an apprentice has become pretty
thoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes clattering along
so fearlessly with his steamboat, night or day, that he presently
begins to imagine that it is HIS courage that animates him;
but the first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to his
own devices he finds out it was the other man's. He discovers
that the article has been left out of his own cargo altogether.
The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment;
he is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible;
his air that of ferocious command.
This man was composed of two very simple and two very good
sentiments, comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint
of exaggerating them,--respect for authority, hatred of rebellion;
and in his eyes, murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms
of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind and profound faith every
one who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to
the rural policeman. He covered with scorn, aversion, and disgust
every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil.
He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand,
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: of a God. Vere magnum habere fragilitatem homi-
nis, securitatem Dei. This would have done better
in poesy, where transcendences are more allowed.
And the poets indeed have been busy with it; for
it is in effect the thing, which figured in that
strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth
not to be without mystery; nay, and to have some
approach to the state of a Christian; that Hercules,
when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom
human nature is represented), sailed the length of
the great ocean, in an earthen pot or pitcher; lively
Essays of Francis Bacon |
