| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: body from mutilation at the hands of the Apaches as
quickly as I would have saved the man himself from death.
Riding close to him I reached down from the saddle,
and grasping his cartridge belt drew him up across the withers
of my mount. A backward glance convinced me that to
return by the way I had come would be more hazardous
than to continue across the plateau, so, putting spurs to my
poor beast, I made a dash for the opening to the pass which
I could distinguish on the far side of the table land.
The Indians had by this time discovered that I was alone
and I was pursued with imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: they were theories as opposed to the no-theory of the Ancien Regime,
which was, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
Theories--principles--by them if men do not live, by them men are,
at least, stirred into life, at the sight of something more noble
than themselves. Only by great ideas, right or wrong, could such a
world as that which Le Sage painted, be roused out of its slough of
foul self-satisfaction, and equally foul self-discontent.
For mankind is ruled and guided, in the long run, not by practical
considerations, not by self-interest, not by compromises; but by
theories and principles, and those of the most abstruse, delicate,
supernatural, and literally unspeakable kind; which, whether they be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: Herodotus, Xenophon, and other writers, by whom the place is
named. See "Dict. of Greek and Roman Geog." "Chalcedon."
Now a despatch from Hippocrates, Mindarus's vice-admiral,[6] had been
intercepted on its way to Lacedaemon, and taken to Athens. It ran as
follows (in broad Doric):[7] "Ships gone; Mindarus dead; the men
starving; at our wits' end what to do."
[6] "Epistoleus," i.e. secretary or despatch writer, is the Spartan
title of the officer second in command to the admiral.
[7] Reading {'Errei ta kala} (Bergk's conjecture for {kala}) =
"timbers," i.e. "ships" (a Doric word). Cf. Aristoph., "Lys."
1253, {potta kala}. The despatch continues: {Mindaros apessoua}
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