| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: be, then, dear Charmides, blessed art thou, in being the son of thy mother.
And here lies the point; for if, as he declares, you have this gift of
temperance already, and are temperate enough, in that case you have no need
of any charms, whether of Zamolxis or of Abaris the Hyperborean, and I may
as well let you have the cure of the head at once; but if you have not yet
acquired this quality, I must use the charm before I give you the medicine.
Please, therefore, to inform me whether you admit the truth of what Critias
has been saying;--have you or have you not this quality of temperance?
Charmides blushed, and the blush heightened his beauty, for modesty is
becoming in youth; he then said very ingenuously, that he really could not
at once answer, either yes, or no, to the question which I had asked: For,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: to Hanson, and, in the passage, changed its name from the
"Mammoth" to the "Calistoga." I had tried to get Rufe to
call it after his wife, after himself, and after Garfield,
the Republican Presidential candidate of the hour - since
then elected, and, alas! dead - but all was in vain. The
claim had once been called the Calistoga before, and he
seemed to feel safety in returning to that.
And so the history of that mine became once more plunged in
darkness, lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of
gossip. And perhaps the most curious feature of the whole
matter is this: that we should have dwelt in this quiet
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers,
ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru,
and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under
these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in
grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry
pour unhindered, MURRAY in hand, over the railways of the
Continent, and yet the slim person of the ARETHUSA is taken in the
meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he
travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he
is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been
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