| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: pleasure. It was another source of joy that to himself it was given to
confront the appointed order of the universe[7] without pain; while
through weakness of soul his rival, it was plain to see, was driven to
flee away from heat and cold, and to shape his life, not by the
pattern of brave men, but of some mean and defenceless animal.[8]
[5] See Herod. i. 135, for the luxury of the Persians and for the
refinements of civilisation. See "Mem." II. i. 10; "Cyrop." VIII.
i. 40.
[6] Or, "in a round of festivity."
[7] See Plut. "Ages." xiv. (Clough, iv. p. 17); "Apophth. Lac." p.
102; Eur. "Supp." 214, 215.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: friends, in company with whom he had visited the mines in the
Sierra Madre; that on this expedition the party had been attacked
by Yaquis and wiped out, he alone surviving; that his
blanket-mate before expiring had told him of gold buried in a
cove of Lower California by the man's grandfather; that the man
had given him a chart showing the location of the treasure; that
he had sewn this chart in the shoulder of his coat, whence his
suspicion of me and his being so loco about getting it back.
"And it's a big thing," said Handy Solomon to me, "for they's not
only gold, but altar jewels and diamonds. It will make us rich,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: his years of office, might have at least suggested other thoughts.
It is a pride common among sextons. A cabinet-maker does not count
his cabinets, nor even an author his volumes, save when they stare
upon him from the shelves; but the grave-digger numbers his graves.
He would indeed be something different from human if his solitary
open-air and tragic labours left not a broad mark upon his mind.
There, in his tranquil aisle, apart from city clamour, among the
cats and robins and the ancient effigies and legends of the tomb,
he waits the continual passage of his contemporaries, falling like
minute drops into eternity. As they fall, he counts them; and this
enumeration, which was at first perhaps appalling to his soul, in
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