| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: that certain beds had been exhausted even to their smallest veins.
Now deserted, these mines perforated the ground with their
useless shafts and forsaken galleries. This was exactly the case
with the pits of Aberfoyle.
Ten years before, the last butty had raised the last ton of coal
from this colliery. The underground working stock, traction engines,
trucks which run on rails along the galleries, subterranean tramways,
frames to support the shaft, pipes--in short, all that constituted
the machinery of a mine had been brought up from its depths.
The exhausted mine was like the body of a huge fantastically-shaped
mastodon, from which all the organs of life have been taken,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: as scarlet, I will make them white as snow; though they be red
like crimson, I will make them white as wool.' Such therefore
being the promises made by God to them that turn to him, tarry
not, O thou man, nor make delay: but draw nigh to Christ, our
loving God, and be enlightened, and thy face shall not be
ashamed. For as soon as thou goest down into the laver of Holy
Baptism, all the defilement of the old man, and all the burden of
thy many sins, is buried in the water, and passeth into
nothingness, and thou comest up from thence a new man, pure from
all pollution, with no spot or wrinkle of sin upon thee; and
thenceforward it is in thy power ever to keep for thyself the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: Lysimachus, but is afterwards recognised as the son of his old friend
Sophroniscus, with whom he never had a difference to the hour of his death.
Socrates is also known to Nicias, to whom he had introduced the excellent
Damon, musician and sophist, as a tutor for his son, and to Laches, who had
witnessed his heroic behaviour at the battle of Delium (compare Symp.).
Socrates, as he is younger than either Nicias or Laches, prefers to wait
until they have delivered their opinions, which they give in a
characteristic manner. Nicias, the tactician, is very much in favour of
the new art, which he describes as the gymnastics of war--useful when the
ranks are formed, and still more useful when they are broken; creating a
general interest in military studies, and greatly adding to the appearance
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