| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: the better able to man vessels, think you--Athens, or ourselves with
our stalwart and numerous Penestae?[6] Which will better support
mariners--a nation which, like our own, out of her abundance exports
her corn to foriegn parts, or Athens, which, but for foreign
purchases, has not enough to support herself? And so as to wealth in
general it is only natural, is it not, that we, who do not look to a
string of little islands for supplies, but gather the fruits of
continental peoples, should find our resources more copious? As soon
as the scattered powers of Thessaly are gathered into a principality,
all the tribes around, I repeat, will become our tributaries. I need
not tell you that the king of Persia reaps the fruits, not of islands,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: square rods, which are worth to-day four hundred thousand francs,--the
value of an actual forest. Here, in this solitude in the middle of
Paris, the birds sang, thrushes, nightingales, warblers, bulfinches,
and sparrows. The greenhouse was like an immense jardiniere, filling
the air with perfume in winter as in summer. The means by which its
atmosphere was made to order, torrid as in China or temperate as in
Italy, were cleverly concealed. Pipes in which hot water circulated,
or steam, were either hidden under ground or festooned with plants
overhead. The boudoir was a large room. The miracle of the modern
Parisian fairy named Architecture is to get all these many and great
things out of a limited bit of ground.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: was serving as private tutor to the latter's sons. A large sum of
money was missing, and every evidence pointed to young Bellmann as
the thief. He denied strenuously that he was guilty, but the
District Judge (it was the present Prosecuting Attorney Schmidt in
G-) sentenced him. He spent eight months in prison, during which
time his mother died of grief at the disgrace. There must have been
something good in the boy, for he had never forgotten that it was
his guilt that struck down his only relative, the mother who had
worked so hard for him. He had atoned for this crime of his youth,
and during the years that have passed since then, he had been an
honest, upright man."
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