| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: The time of night when Troy was set on fire,
The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl
And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves,
That time best fits the work we have in hand.
Madam, sit you and fear not; whom we raise,
We will make fast within a hallow'd verge.
[Here they do the ceremonies belonging, and make the circle;
Bolingbroke or Southwell reads, Conjuro te, etc.
It thunders and lightens terribly; then the Spirit riseth.]
SPIRIT.
Adsum.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from
his mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman
faculty for knowing how to address letters to eminent people,
and in what terms to conclude them, he had a smattering of
archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had learned
to depend--her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the
range of her interests.
Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss
Hicks's way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to
them, but left them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best
they could, while she pursued her own course of self-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: would you say that you had improved by your conversation? There may have
been good deeds of this sort which were done by you as a private person,
before you came forward in public. Why will you not answer?
CALLICLES: You are contentious, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because I
really want to know in what way you think that affairs should be
administered among us--whether, when you come to the administration of
them, you have any other aim but the improvement of the citizens? Have we
not already admitted many times over that such is the duty of a public man?
Nay, we have surely said so; for if you will not answer for yourself I must
answer for you. But if this is what the good man ought to effect for the
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