| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: at once made a proclamation calling on all Thebans to come out, horse
and foot, seeing that the tyrants were dead. The citizens, indeed, as
long as it was night, not knowing whom or what to trust, kept quiet,
but when day dawned and revealed what had occurred, the summons was
responded to with alacrity, heavy infantry and cavalry under arms
alike sallying forth. Horsemen were also despatched by the now
restored exiles to the two Athenian generals on the frontier; and
they, being aware of the object of the mesage [promptly responded].[6]
[5] See plan of Thebes, "Dict. Geog."; Arrian, "Anab." i. 8; Aesch.
"Sept. c. Theb." 528.
[6] Supply {epeboethoun}. There is a lacuna in the MSS. at this point.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: His sunken cheeks slowly reddened and burned with miserable
shame. When his wife rushed from the room her daughter strode
after her with set lips. The servant stole up to the coffin,
bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen,
leaving Steavens, the lawyer, and the father to themselves. The
old man stood trembling and looking down at his dead son's face.
The sculptor's splendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid
stillness than in life. The dark hair had crept down upon the
wide forehead; the face seemed strangely long, but in it there
was not that beautiful and chaste repose which we expect to find
in the faces of the dead. The brows were so drawn that there
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy.
He that of greatest works is finisher
Oft does them by the weakest minister:
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown
From simple sources; and great seas have dried
When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
KING.
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