| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: him by their extravagance.
The city now being built, Romulus enlisted all that were of age to bear
arms into military companies, each company consisting of three thousand
footmen and three hundred horse. These companies were called legions,
because they were the choicest and most select of the people for
fighting men. The rest of the multitude he called the people; one
hundred of the most eminent he chose for counselors; these he styled
patricians, and their assembly the senate, which signifies a council of
elders. The patricians, some say, were so called because they were the
fathers of lawful children; others, because they could give a good
account who their own fathers were, which not every one of the rabble
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: had belonged, not only to her mother but to her mother's mother and
grandmother; and she remembered some happy smiles which it had reflected.
Of course, if she could have offered the priests a certain sum of money in
place of the mirror, she could have asked them to give back her heirloom.
But she had not the money necessary. Whenever she went to the temple, she
saw her mirror lying in the court-yard, behind a railing, among hundreds of
other mirrors heaped there together. She knew it by the Sho-Chiku-Bai in
relief on the back of it,-- those three fortunate emblems of Pine, Bamboo,
and Plumflower, which delighted her baby-eyes when her mother first showed
her the mirror. She longed for some chance to steal the mirror, and hide
it,-- that she might thereafter treasure it always. But the chance did not
Kwaidan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: of Myrtilus would entail upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly
changed, offers two etymologies; either apo tes tou lithou talanteias, or
apo tou talantaton einai, signifying at once the hanging of the stone over
his head in the world below, and the misery which he brought upon his
country. And the name of his father, Zeus, Dios, Zenos, has an excellent
meaning, though hard to be understood, because really a sentence which is
divided into two parts (Zeus, Dios). For he, being the lord and king of
all, is the author of our being, and in him all live: this is implied in
the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put together and interpreted is
di on ze panta. There may, at first sight, appear to be some irreverence
in calling him the son of Cronos, who is a proverb for stupidity; but the
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