| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: After she had looked at them for a while, and as my husband was
closing up the telescope, she exclaimed: "That is the kind of an
instrument that some foreigners sent as a present to my
grandfather while he was viceroy, but it was larger than this
one."
"And did he use it?" asked my husband.
"No, we did not know what it was for. Besides my grandfather was
too busy with the affairs of the government to try to understand
it."
"And where is it now?" asked Mr. Headland, thinking that the
viceroy might be willing to donate it to the college.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: such as none but madmen would have gone about, yet, to give them
their due, they went about it as warily as boldly; they were
gallantly armed, for they had every man a fusee or musket, a
bayonet, and a pistol; some of them had broad cutlasses, some of
them had hangers, and the boatswain and two more had poleaxes;
besides all which they had among them thirteen hand grenadoes.
Bolder fellows, and better provided, never went about any wicked
work in the world. When they went out their chief design was
plunder, and they were in mighty hopes of finding gold there; but a
circumstance which none of them were aware of set them on fire with
revenge, and made devils of them all.
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: interpreter.
This curious passage is, therefore, to be regarded as Plato's satire on the
tedious and hypercritical arts of interpretation which prevailed in his own
day, and may be compared with his condemnation of the same arts when
applied to mythology in the Phaedrus, and with his other parodies, e.g.
with the two first speeches in the Phaedrus and with the Menexenus.
Several lesser touches of satire may be observed, such as the claim of
philosophy advanced for the Lacedaemonians, which is a parody of the claims
advanced for the Poets by Protagoras; the mistake of the Laconizing set in
supposing that the Lacedaemonians are a great nation because they bruise
their ears; the far-fetched notion, which is 'really too bad,' that
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