| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further
inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from
it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea:
these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they
brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the
fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal
into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits
of the earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in
summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the
canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: and drab coat on to-morrow."
"Dear, dear," wept Mrs. Cranch, "and we've been at the expense
of travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle here so long!
It's the first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so wishful
to please God Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must
say it's hard--I can think no other."
"It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief,"
said Solomon, with a bitterness which was remarkably genuine,
though his tone could not help being sly. "Peter was a bad liver,
and almshouses won't cover it, when he's had the impudence to show
it at the last."
Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: over and took the bottle.
"I am a man of my word," said he, "and had need to be so, or I
would not touch this bottle with my foot. Well, I shall get my
schooner and a dollar or two for my pocket; and then I will be rid
of this devil as fast as I can. For to tell you the plain truth,
the look of him has cast me down."
"Lopaka," said Keawe, "do not you think any worse of me than you
can help; I know it is night, and the roads bad, and the pass by
the tombs an ill place to go by so late, but I declare since I have
seen that little face, I cannot eat or sleep or pray till it is
gone from me. I will give you a lantern and a basket to put the
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