| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: "Then, my worthy companion, I would answer that we have observed
the lunar continent at a distance of 500 yards at most, and that
nothing seemed to us to move on the moon's surface. The presence
of any kind of life would have been betrayed by its attendant marks,
such as divers buildings, and even by ruins. And what have
we seen? Everywhere and always the geological works of nature,
never the work of man. If, then, there exist representatives
of the animal kingdom on the moon, they must have fled to those
unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach; which I cannot
admit, for they must have left traces of their passage on those
plains which the atmosphere must cover, however slightly raised
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: nonce, each of his own division. The conclusion being that under no
circumstances whatever are the boys of Sparta destitute of one to rule
them.
[19] Lit. "Paidonomos."
[20] Lit. "Eirens."
I ought, as it seems to me, not to omit some remark on the subject of
boy attachments,[21] it being a topic in close connection with that of
boyhood and the training of boys.
[21] See Plut. "Lycurg." 17 (Clough, i. 109).
We know that the rest of the Hellenes deal with this relationship in
different ways, either after the manner of the Boeotians,[22] where
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: with the reflection that it was the price we have to pay for
cochineal. And with that murderous parody, logical optimism
and the praises of the best of possible words went
irrevocably out of season, and have been no more heard of in
the mouths of reasonable men. Whitman spares us all
allusions to the cochineal; he treats evil and sorrow in a
spirit almost as of welcome; as an old sea-dog might have
welcomed the sight of the enemy's topsails off the Spanish
Main. There, at least, he seems to say, is something obvious
to be done. I do not know many better things in literature
than the brief pictures, - brief and vivid like things seen
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