The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: "Hello, Betts, what's up?" said Col. Zane, in his rapid voice.
At the same moment the door at the end of the hall opened and Isaac came out.
"Eb, Betty, I heard voices out doors and in the house. What's the row?"
"Oh, Isaac! Oh, Eb! Something terrible has happened!" cried Betty,
breathlessly.
"Then it is no time to get excited," said the Colonel, calmly. He placed his
arm round Betty and drew her into the room. "Isaac, get down the rifles. Now,
Betty, time is precious. Tell me quickly, briefly."
"I was awakened by a stone rolling on the floor. I ran to the window and saw a
man by the fence. He came under my window and I saw it was Miller. He said he
was going to join Girty. He said if I would go with him he would save the
 Betty Zane |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: finding great things had happened. But there were few
transformations in Piccadilly - only three or four big red houses
where there had been low black ones - and the brightness of the end
of June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and
glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen it
in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting he appreciated; it
seemed friendly and pointed, added to the exhilaration of his
finished book, of his having his own country and the huge
oppressive amusing city that suggested everything, that contained
everything, under his hand again. "Stay at home and do things here
- do subjects we can measure," St. George had said; and now it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: shining in a distant heaven. They were the symbols of different schools of
philosophy: but in what relation did they stand to one another and to the
world of sense? It was hardly conceivable that one could be other, or the
same different. Yet without some reconciliation of these elementary ideas
thought was impossible. There was no distinction between truth and
falsehood, between the Sophist and the philosopher. Everything could be
predicated of everything, or nothing of anything. To these difficulties
Plato finds what to us appears to be the answer of common sense--that Not-
being is the relative or other of Being, the defining and distinguishing
principle, and that some ideas combine with others, but not all with all.
It is remarkable however that he offers this obvious reply only as the
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