| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: your children yet, if you wish to keep them. But DO you wish it?
Suppose you had each, at the back of your houses, a garden, large
enough for your children to play in, with just as much lawn as would
give them room to run,--no more--and that you could not change your
abode; but that, if you chose, you could double your income, or
quadruple it, by digging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and
turning the flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I
hope not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it
gave you income sixty-fold instead of four-fold.
Yet this is what you are doing with all England. The whole country
is but a little garden, not more than enough for your children to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Anabasis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: with a cloth, and thereupon flesh and diverse viands and a cup full
of mare's milk. And men put a mare beside him with her foal, and
an horse saddled and bridled. And they lay upon the horse gold and
silver, great quantity. And they put about him great plenty of
straw. And then men make a great pit and a large, and with the
tent and all these other things they put him in earth. And they
say that when he shall come into another world, he shall not be
without an house, ne without horse, ne without gold and silver; and
the mare shall give him milk, and bring him forth more horses till
he be well stored in the tother world. For they trow that after
their death they shall be eating and drinking in that other world,
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