| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: Hellenes); or else concocts a peace that shall presently involve us in
internecine war, as he anticipates:--but why dwell on facts so patent?
--I ask, did ever Hellene before Agesilaus so enter heart and soul
upon his duty; whether it were to help some tribe to throw off the
Persian yoke, or to save from destruction a revolted district, or if
nothing else, at any rate to saddle the Persian with such troubles of
his own that he should cease to trouble Hellas? An ardent hater of
Persia surely was he, who, when his own country was at war with
Hellenes, did not neglect the common good of Hellas, but set sail to
wreak what harm he might upon the barbarians.[12]
[11] Or, "the worse the mischief he can work, the better the side."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: He waited for her in the large hall of the hotel, where the couriers,
the servants, the foreign tourists, were lounging about and staring.
It was not the place he should have chosen, but she had appointed it.
She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves,
squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure,
dressed in the perfection of a soberly elegant traveling costume.
Winterbourne was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors
used to say, sensibility; as he looked at her dress and,
on the great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step,
he felt as if there were something romantic going forward.
He could have believed he was going to elope with her.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: fair to judge the Countess too hastily; young wives would be in a very
hapless plight if an expressive look or a few graceful dancing steps
were enough to compromise a woman.
Martial alone knew the extent of his happiness. During the last
figure, when the ladies had to form the moulinet, his fingers clasped
those of the Countess, and he fancied that, through the thin perfumed
kid of her gloves, the young wife's grasp responded to his amorous
appeal.
"Madame," said he, as the quadrille ended, "do not go back to the
odious corner where you have been burying your face and your dress
until now. Is admiration the only benefit you can obtain from the
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