| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: infinite. He had previously of course discovered, as I had myself
for that matter, that their dinners were soignes. Let me not
indeed, in saying this, neglect to declare that I shall falsify my
counterfeit if I seem to hint that there was in his nature any
ounce of calculation. He took whatever came, but he never plotted
for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have
been so little of a parasite. He had a system of the universe, but
he had no system of sponging--that was quite hand-to-mouth. He had
fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite
that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we
could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: the grating was broken down one morning, they knew with a shudder that
they were free. The effect produced by the Revolution upon their
simple souls is easy to imagine; it produced a temporary imbecility
not natural to them. They could not bring the ideas learned in the
convent into harmony with life and its difficulties; they could not
even understand their own position. They were like children whom
mothers have always cared for, deserted by their maternal providence.
And as a child cries, they betook themselves to prayer. Now, in the
presence of imminent danger, they were mute and passive, knowing no
defence save Christian resignation.
The man at the door, taking silence for consent, presented himself,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: barbarians at Marathon, and chastened the pride of the whole of Asia, and
by the victory which they gained over the barbarians first taught other men
that the power of the Persians was not invincible, but that hosts of men
and the multitude of riches alike yield to valour. And I assert that those
men are the fathers not only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the
liberties of all who are on the continent, for that was the action to which
the Hellenes looked back when they ventured to fight for their own safety
in the battles which ensued: they became disciples of the men of Marathon.
To them, therefore, I assign in my speech the first place, and the second
to those who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and
Artemisium; for of them, too, one might have many things to say--of the
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