| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: me on paper, he looks unreal and phantasmal: the best that I can
say may convey some notion to those that never saw him, but to me
it will be ever impotent.
The first time that I saw him, I fancy Robert was pretty old
already: he had certainly begun to use his years as a stalking
horse. Latterly he was beyond all the impudencies of logic,
considering a reference to the parish register worth all the
reasons in the world, "I AM OLD AND WELL STRICKEN IN YEARS," he was
wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the
argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were
not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: for it, whether under the turf or in the bed of the creek. But
Margrave's eyes, hungrily gazing round every spot from which the
ore was disburied, could not detect the substance of which he alone
knew the outward appearance. I had begun to believe that, even in
the description given to him of this material, he had been
credulously duped, and that no such material existed, when, coming
back from the bed of the watercourse, I saw a faint, yellow gleam
amidst the roots of a giant parasite plant, the leaves and blossoms
of which climbed up the sides of the cave with its antediluvian
relics. The gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removing the loose
earth round the roots of the plant, we came on-- No, I will not, I
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
The Cyropaedia 8
Anabasis |
