| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: rhetoric, and when?
PHAEDRUS: A very great power in public meetings.
SOCRATES: It has. But I should like to know whether you have the same
feeling as I have about the rhetoricians? To me there seem to be a great
many holes in their web.
PHAEDRUS: Give an example.
SOCRATES: I will. Suppose a person to come to your friend Eryximachus, or
to his father Acumenus, and to say to him: 'I know how to apply drugs
which shall have either a heating or a cooling effect, and I can give a
vomit and also a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all this,
as I do, I claim to be a physician and to make physicians by imparting this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: "Fish again! Read! read!"
The Chair fished again, and once more the familiar words began to
fall from its lips--"'You are far from being a bad man--'"
"Name! name! What's his name?"
"'L. Ingoldsby Sargent.'"
"Five elected! Pile up the Symbols! Go on, go on!"
"'You are far from being a bad--'"
"Name! name!"
"'Nicholas Whitworth.'"
"Hooray! hooray! it's a symbolical day!"
Somebody wailed in, and began to sing this rhyme (leaving out
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: the other day, and this morning I got an answer from him--
a cursed, canting letter of good advice, remarking that he had
already paid my debts seven times. It does n't happen to be seven;
it 's only six, or six and a half! Does he expect me to spend
the rest of my life at the Hotel de Hollande? Perhaps he would
like me to engage as a waiter there and pay it off by serving
at the table d'hote. It would be convenient for him the next time
he comes abroad with his seven daughters and two governesses.
I hate the smell of their beastly table d'hote! You 're
sorry I 'm hard up? I 'm sure I 'm much obliged to you.
Can you be of any service? My dear fellow, if you are bent on
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