| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: should march round by a secret way, and encompass the other
wing, which Euclidas, Cleomenes's brother, commanded; and
then drew out the rest of his forces to the battle. And
Cleomenes, from a convenient rising, viewing his order, and
not seeing any of the Illyrians and Acarnanians, began to
suspect that Antigonus had sent them upon some such design,
and calling for Damoteles, who was at the head of those
specially appointed to such ambush duty, he bade him
carefully to look after and discover the enemy's designs upon
his rear. But Damoteles, for some say Antigonus had bribed
him, telling him that he should not be solicitous about that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: king, though he had spoken no word to me, good or bad, since the
yesterday, when I foretold to him that in the blood of the white men
whom he had betrayed grew the flower of his own death. For, my father,
it was on the morrow of the slaying of the Amaboona that Umslopogaas
came to the kraal Umgugundhlovu.
Now the mind of Dingaan was heavy, and he sought something to lighten
it. Presently he bethought himself of the white praying man, who had
come to the kraal seeking to teach us people of the Zulu to worship
other gods than the assegai and the king. Now this was a good man, but
no luck went with his teaching, which was hard to understand; and,
moreover, the indunas did not like it, because it seemed to set a
Nada the Lily |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, we gloat
over the pathos of the police court, and gather the night-dew of the
grave.
It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these things;
the facts are frightful enough;--the measure of national fault
involved in them is perhaps not as great as it would at first seem.
We permit, or cause, thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no harm;
we set fire to houses, and ravage peasants' fields, yet we should be
sorry to find we had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart;
still capable of virtue, but only as children are. Chalmers, at the
end of his long life, having had much power with the public, being
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