| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: know not if the gods will suffer me to return, or whether I
shall be cut off there in Troy; so do thou have a care for
all these things. Be mindful of my father and my mother in
the halls, even as now thou art, or yet more than now,
while I am far away. But when thou seest thy son a bearded
man, marry whom thou wilt and leave thine own house."
'Even so did he speak, and now all these things have an
end. The night shall come when a hateful marriage shall
find me out, me most luckless, whose good hap Zeus has
taken away. But furthermore this sore trouble has come on
my heart and soul; for this was not the manner of wooers in
 The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: as many more came dropping in one after another, or by twos and
threes. In crossing the Lozere I had not only come among new
natural features, but moved into the territory of a different race.
These people, as they hurriedly despatched their viands in an
intricate sword-play of knives, questioned and answered me with a
degree of intelligence which excelled all that I had met, except
among the railway folk at Chasserades. They had open telling
faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only
entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than
one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on
such another.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: the Gordons and other loyalists. But the zeal of these gentlemen
was, for the time, effectually bridled by a large body of
Covenanters, commanded by the Lord Burleigh, and supposed to
amount to three thousand men. These Montrose boldly attacked
with half their number. The battle was fought under the walls Of
the city, and the resolute valour of Montrose's followers was
again successful against every disadvantage.
But it was the fate of this great commander, always to gain the
glory, but seldom to reap the fruits of victory. He had scarcely
time to repose his small army in Aberdeen, ere he found, on the
one hand, that the Gordons were likely to be deterred from
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