| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: sexton differs from the Scotch. The "goodman delver," reckoning up
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
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: SOCRATES: And will not hearing be useful for virtue, if virtue is taught
by hearing and we use the sense of hearing in giving instruction?
CRITIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And since medicine frees the sick man from his disease, that art
too may sometimes appear useful in the acquisition of virtue, e.g. when
hearing is procured by the aid of medicine.
CRITIAS: Very likely.
SOCRATES: But if, again, we obtain by wealth the aid of medicine, shall we
not regard wealth as useful for virtue?
CRITIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And also the instruments by which wealth is procured?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: idle sentiment. But they were beautiful; they were speaking;
they were mocking; they drew her. "Ah!" she sighed. "It will
not be so very easy to leave them, after all."
Madeline closed and darkened the window. She struck a light. It
was necessary to tell the anxious servants who knocked that she
was well and required nothing. A soft step on the walk outside
arrested her. Who was there--Nels or Nick Steele or Stillwell?
Who shared the guardianship over her, now that Monty Price was
dead and that other--that savage--? It was monstrous and
unfathomable that she regretted him.
The light annoyed her. Complete darkness fitted her strange
The Light of Western Stars |
