| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: is his. We do not deny that we were serviceable allies enough to
Lacedaemon, as you will bear us witness; but this we say:--If we
helped the Lacedaemonians vigorously in the past, everything tends to
show that we shall help you still more vigorously to-day; for our
swords will be unsheathed, not in behalf of islanders, or Syracusans,
or men of alien stock, as happened in the late war, but of ourselves,
suffering under a sense of wrong. And there is another important fact
which you ought to realise: this selfish system of organised greed
which is Sparta's will fall more readily to pieces than your own late
empire. Yours was the proud assertion of naval empire over subjects
powerless by sea. Theirs is the selfish sway of a minority asserting
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it
was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull
ferryboat. I skimmed around for the watchman, a-
wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by I
found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head
down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or
three little shoves, and begun to cry.
He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when
he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch,
and then he says:
"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: from going crazy. He seemed to make everything easier."
"Oh, sister, how could you?" Ann Eliza wailed. She knew
little of the Catholic religion except that "Papists" believed in
it--in itself a sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had
not freed her from the formal part of her religious belief, and
apostasy had always seemed to her one of the sins from which the
pure in mind avert their thoughts.
"And then when the baby was born," Evelina continued, "he
christened it right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that,
you see, I had to be a Catholic."
"I don't see--"
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