| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: fulfils that great and truly philosophic law, that he who loveth not his
brother is in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth. And so it
befell those old Greek schools. It is out of our path to follow them to
Italy, where sturdy old Roman patriots cursed them, and with good
reason, as corrupting the morals of the young. Our business is with
Alexandria; and there, certainly, they did nothing for the elevation of
humanity. What culture they may have given, probably helped to make the
Alexandrians, what Caesar calls them, the most ingenious of all nations:
but righteous or valiant men it did not make them. When, after the
three great reigns of Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes, the race of
the Ptolemies began to wear itself out, Alexandria fell morally, as its
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him
to the Pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking
with the bonnetless Doge--talking tranquilly, too,
although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum,
and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns,
and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed,
twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and
happy holiday serenity and Sunday-school procession,
and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet
of turmoil and racket and insubordination. This latter
state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: as ten francs; but he continued to shake his head. 'Name your own
price, then,' said I.
'CE N'EST PAS CA,' he said at length, and with evident difficulty;
'but I am not going to cross the door - MAIS JE NE SORTIRAI PAS DE
LA PORTE.'
I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I should
do.
'Where are you going beyond Cheylard?' he asked by way of answer.
'That is no affair of yours,' I returned, for I was not going to
indulge his bestial curiosity; 'it changes nothing in my present
predicament.'
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