| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: not mix the breed. And now, if we omit dogs, who can hardly be said to
herd, I think that we have only two species left which remain undivided:
and how are we to distinguish them? To geometricians, like you and
Theaetetus, I can have no difficulty in explaining that man is a diameter,
having a power of two feet; and the power of four-legged creatures, being
the double of two feet, is the diameter of our diameter. There is another
excellent jest which I spy in the two remaining species. Men and birds are
both bipeds, and human beings are running a race with the airiest and
freest of creation, in which they are far behind their competitors;--this
is a great joke, and there is a still better in the juxtaposition of the
bird-taker and the king, who may be seen scampering after them. For, as we
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: Staverton, with whom for a couple of months now he had availed
himself of every possible occasion to talk; this disposition and
this resource, this comfort and support, as the situation in fact
presented itself, having promptly enough taken the first place in
the considerable array of rather unattenuated surprises attending
his so strangely belated return to America. Everything was somehow
a surprise; and that might be natural when one had so long and so
consistently neglected everything, taken pains to give surprises so
much margin for play. He had given them more than thirty years -
thirty-three, to be exact; and they now seemed to him to have
organised their performance quite on the scale of that licence. He
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: was wholly out of keeping with the quick, daring, agile wit that
he had exhibited the night before. She found her hand toying
unconsciously with the weapon in her pocket. She was aware that
she was fencing with unbuttoned foils. How much did he know
- about last night?
"Well, why don't youse spill it?" she invited curtly. "Who are
youse?"
"Who am I?" He lifted the lapel of his coat, carrying the
boutonniere to his nose. "My dear lady, I am an adventurer."
"Youse don't say!" observed Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan. "An' wot's
dat w' en it's at home?"
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