| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: in love with him; and, to say the truth, he is very like you, for he has a
snub nose, and projecting eyes, although these features are not so marked
in him as in you. He combines the most various qualities, quickness,
patience, courage; and he is gentle as well as wise, always silently
flowing on, like a river of oil. Look! he is the middle one of those who
are entering the palaestra.'
Socrates, who does not know his name, recognizes him as the son of
Euphronius, who was himself a good man and a rich. He is informed by
Theodorus that the youth is named Theaetetus, but the property of his
father has disappeared in the hands of trustees; this does not, however,
prevent him from adding liberality to his other virtues. At the desire of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd
successions. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and
before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I
had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she
survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might
approach her with the feeble flicker of my plea. Did she know and
if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for
more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she
passed out of all reach I felt renannouncement indeed my appointed
lot. I was shut up in my obsession for ever - my gaolers had gone
off with the key. I find myself quite as vague as a captive in a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: "My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it
is not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to
dinner and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock
Fougeres was at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed
the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched
up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the
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