| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Cicero and Cornelius Nepos. It does not seem impossible that so attractive
a theme as the meeting of a philosopher and a tyrant, once imagined by the
genius of a Sophist, may have passed into a romance which became famous in
Hellas and the world. It may have created one of the mists of history,
like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather as
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines
driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband
and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from
vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer
with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to
explode the ancient myth, that it is woman's exclusive sphere, and a part
of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household
wear.
Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined
tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; and
the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex condition
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: This was indeed all; and my hasty impressions of shooting and a corpse
gave way to mirth over the child and his innocent grievance that he had
blurted out before I could get off my horse.
Since when, I inquired of him, had his own company become such a shock to
him?
"As to that," replied Mr. McLean, a thought ruffled, "when a man expects
lonesomeness he stands it like he stands anything else, of course. But
when he has figured on finding company--say--" he broke off (and
vindictiveness sparkled in his eye)--"when you're lucky enough to catch
yourself alone, why, I suppose yu' just take a chair and chat to yourself
for hours.--You've not seen anything of Tommy?" he pursued with interest.
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