| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: the neighbourhood of Callander. Very odd these identities of
sensation, and the world of connotations implied; highland
huts, and peat smoke, and the brown, swirling rivers, and wet
clothes, and whiskey, and the romance of the past, and that
indescribable bite of the whole thing at a man's heart, which
is - or rather lies at the bottom of - a story.
I don't know if you are a Barbey d'Aurevilly-an. I am. I
have a great delight in his Norman stories. Do you know the
CHEVALIER DES TOUCHES and L'ENSORCELEE? They are admirable,
they reek of the soil and the past. But I was rather
thinking just now of LE RIDEAU CRAMOISI, and its adorable
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: thus preserve the partisans of the democracy, and ruin her opponents
in the law courts. Whereas, supposing the several allied states tried
their cases at home, being inspired by hostility to Athens, they would
destroy those of their own citizens whose friendship to the Athenian
People was most marked. But besides all this the democracy derives the
following advantages from hearing the cases of her allies in Athens.
In the first place, the one per cent[44] levied in Piraeus is
increased to the profit of the state; again, the owner of a lodging-
house[45] does better, and so, too, the owner of a pair of beasts, or
of slaves to be let out on hire;[46] again, heralds and criers[47] are
a class of people who fare better owing to the sojourn of foreigners
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: we leave work for your musing? that's well, I faith;
But here comes my old master now.
[Enter Old Cromwell.]
OLD CROMWELL.
You idle knaves, what, are you loitering now?
No hammers walking and my work to do!
What, not a heat among your work to day?
HODGE.
Marry, sir, your son Thomas will not let us work at all.
OLD CROMWELL.
Why, knave, I say, have I thus carked & car'd
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