| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: was peace, and our city was held in honour; and then, as prosperity makes
men jealous, there succeeded a jealousy of her, and jealousy begat envy,
and so she became engaged against her will in a war with the Hellenes. On
the breaking out of war, our citizens met the Lacedaemonians at Tanagra,
and fought for the freedom of the Boeotians; the issue was doubtful, and
was decided by the engagement which followed. For when the Lacedaemonians
had gone on their way, leaving the Boeotians, whom they were aiding, on the
third day after the battle of Tanagra, our countrymen conquered at
Oenophyta, and righteously restored those who had been unrighteously
exiled. And they were the first after the Persian war who fought on behalf
of liberty in aid of Hellenes against Hellenes; they were brave men, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: same with saplings. About the time the trees begin to be worth
having the proprietary landscape-gardener dies of old age. However,
as custom permits a Far Oriental no ancestral growth of timber,
he is obliged to lay the seeds of his own family trees. Natural
offspring are on the whole easier to get, and more satisfactory when
got. Hence the haste with which these peoples rush into matrimony.
If in despite of his precipitation fate perversely refuse to grant
him children, he must endeavor to make good the omission by
artificial means. He proceeds to adopt somebody. True to instinct,
he chooses from preference a collateral relative. In some far-eastern
lands he must so restrict himself by law. In Korea, for instance,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: She interrupted me, and something of her splendid poise was gone.
"Please don't go back," she said. "I am afraid it would be of no
use. And I don't want to be left alone."
Heaven knows I did not want her to be alone. I was more than
content to walk along beside her aimlessly, for any length of time.
Gradually, as she lost the exaltation of the moment, I was gaining
my normal condition of mind. I was beginning to realize that I had
lacked the morning grace of a shave, that I looked like some lost
hope of yesterday, and that my left shoe pinched outrageously. A
man does not rise triumphant above such handicaps. The girl, for
all her disordered hair and the crumpled linen of her waist, in
The Man in Lower Ten |
