| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: should like to hear him; but if not, we are satisfied with our own view,
that unless a man estimates the various characters of his hearers and is
able to divide all things into classes and to comprehend them under single
ideas, he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the limits of
human power. And this skill he will not attain without a great deal of
trouble, which a good man ought to undergo, not for the sake of speaking
and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is
acceptable to God and always to act acceptably to Him as far as in him
lies; for there is a saying of wiser men than ourselves, that a man of
sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at least this should
not be his first object) but his good and noble masters; and therefore if
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: head as if in combat, and again began to snore.
Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in the
next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was
awake. He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face
riveted upon the intervening door.
He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to
him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin
started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the
door-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.
The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like
sleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: further attention to me, and I was at liberty to
whimper and sob to my heart's content. Several of the
women gathered curiously about me, and I recognized
them. I had encountered them the preceding year when
my mother had taken me to the hazelnut canyons.
But they quickly left me alone, being replaced by a
dozen curious and teasing youngsters. They formed a
circle around me, pointing their fingers, making faces,
and poking and pinching me. I was frightened, and for
a time I endured them, then anger got the best of me
and I sprang tooth and nail upon the most audacious one
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