| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: can conceive no clearer exposition of his generalship than the bare
narration of his exploits.
The scene is Asia, and this his first achievement. Tissaphernes had
sworn an oath to Agesilaus on this wise: if Agesilaus would grant him
an armistice until the return of certain ambassadors whom he would
send to the king, he (Tissaphernes) would do his utmost to procure the
independence of the Hellenic cities in Asia. And Agesilaus took a
counter oath: without fraud or covin to observe the armistice during
the three months[7] necessary to that transaction. But the compact was
scarcely made when Tissaphernes gave the lie to the solemn undertaking
he had sworn to. So far from effecting peace, he begged the King to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: his more delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his
inferior. But let us select them from the pages of the same
writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance,
Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of HENRY IV., a fine
flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second manner, and set
it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv.
scene iii.; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken
throughout by Rosalind and Orlando; compare, for example, the
first speech of all, Orlando's speech to Adam, with what
passage it shall please you to select - the Seven Ages from
the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as Othello's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: one for his 'Mammy.' This was about eleven, mark you. People
stopped and spoke to him, and then went on, leaving him more
frightened than before. But I and a good-humoured mechanic came up
together; and I instantly developed a latent faculty for setting
the hearts of children at rest. Master Tommy Murphy (such was his
name) soon stopped crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry
him; and the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to
find his parents. I was soon so tired that I had to ask the
mechanic to carry the bairn; and you should have seen the puzzled
contempt with which he looked at me, for knocking in so soon. He
was a good fellow, however, although very impracticable and
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