| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: all the treasures of the earth, and I was looking around
for a man with a particular good kind heart and a
noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just
that man, I've got a kind of a salve I could put on
his eyes and he could see the treasures and get them
out."
So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he
cried, and begged, and took on, and went down on his
knees, and said he was just that kind of a man, and
said he could fetch a thousand people that would say
he wasn't ever described so exact before.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: Nineteenth Day of OCTOBER 1726, and every One of us to
acquaint Friends of the Day and Hour, being WEDNESDAY,
the Day of the Week on which most of them were executed,
and at 4 of the Clock at Night, being the Hour that most
of them went to their resting Graves. We caused make a
compleat Coffin for them in Black, with four Yards of
fine Linen, the way that our Martyrs Corps were managed.
. . . Accordingly we kept the aforesaid Day and Hour, and
doubled the Linen, and laid the Half of it below them,
their nether jaws being parted from their Heads; but
being young Men, their Teeth remained. All were Witness
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: put defence and accusation into formal language?[21]
[21] "Does your practice include the art of translating into words
your sentiments?" Cf. "Mem." I. ii. 52.
Isch. "Formal language," say you, Socrates? The fact is, I never cease
to practise speaking; and on this wise: Some member of my household
has some charge to bring, or some defence to make,[22] against some
other. I have to listen and examine. I must try to sift the truth. Or
there is some one whom I have to blame or praise before my friends, or
I must arbitrate between some close connections and endeavour to
enforce the lesson that it is to their own interests to be friends not
foes.[23] . . . We are present to assist a general in court;[24] we
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