| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: The reading here adopted I owe to Dr. Arnold Hug, {os me ponous
auton elattous ton sition gignesthai}.
[13] See Plat. "Laws," vii. 796 A; Jowett, "Plato," v. p. 365; Xen.
"Symp." ii. 7; Plut. "Lycurg." 19.
VI
There are other points in which this legislator's views run counter to
those commonly accepted. Thus: in other states the individual citizen
is master over his own children, domestics,[1] goods and chattels, and
belongings generally; but Lycurgus, whose aim was to secure to all the
citizens a considerable share in one another's goods without mutual
injury, enacted that each one should have an equal power of his
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: by degrees, and the boat, which was still fastened to its side,
was carried along with giddy speed. I felt that sickly giddiness
which arises from long-continued whirling round.
We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped,
all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat,
like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our frail bark!
What roarings repeated by the echo miles away! What an uproar was that
of the waters broken on the sharp rocks at the bottom, where the hardest
bodies are crushed, and trees worn away, "with all the fur rubbed off,"
according to the Norwegian phrase!
What a situation to be in! We rocked frightfully. The Nautilus
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: girdle from the nail on which it hung.
The workmen's cook, who had had a sleep after dinner and was
now getting the samovar ready for her husband, turned
cheerfully to Nikita, and infected by his hurry began to move
as quickly as he did, got down his miserable worn-out cloth
coat from the stove where it was drying, and began hurriedly
shaking it out and smoothing it down.
'There now, you'll have a chance of a holiday with your good
man,' said Nikita, who from kindhearted politeness always said
something to anyone he was alone with.
Then, drawing his worn narrow girdle round him, he drew in his
Master and Man |
