| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: occasions; as particularly, in time of war they are used as press-
smacks, running to all the northern and western coasts to pick up
seamen to man the navy, when any expedition is at hand that
requires a sudden equipment; at other times, being excellent
sailors, they are tenders to particular men of war; and on an
expedition they have been made use of as machines for the blowing
up of fortified ports and havens; as at Calais, St. Malo, and other
places.
This parish of Barking is very large, and by the improvement of
lands taken in out of the Thames, and out of the river which runs
by the town, the tithes, as the townsmen assured me, are worth
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: inferiority; or if you look at the temperance and orderliness and ease and
grace and magnanimity and courage and endurance and love of toil and desire
of glory and ambition of the Lacedaemonians--in all these respects you will
see that you are but a child in comparison of them. Even in the matter of
wealth, if you value yourself upon that, I must reveal to you how you
stand; for if you form an estimate of the wealth of the Lacedaemonians, you
will see that our possessions fall far short of theirs. For no one here
can compete with them either in the extent and fertility of their own and
the Messenian territory, or in the number of their slaves, and especially
of the Helots, or of their horses, or of the animals which feed on the
Messenian pastures. But I have said enough of this: and as to gold and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: orders to be given, and brief interviews, making Nucingen's private
office a sort of financial lobby, one of his stockbrokers announced to
him the disappearance of a member of the Company, one of the richest
and cleverest too--Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Falleix, and the
successor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker in
ordinary to the house of Nucingen. In concert with du Tillet and the
Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this man in cold blood, as
if it had been the killing of a Passover lamb.
"He could not hafe helt on," replied the Baron quietly.
Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-jobbing. During
a crisis a few months since he had saved the situation by acting
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