| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: as if all their years of familiarity had not made her perversities,
on occasion, any more easy to follow.
"I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind.
I daresay you would like to think so," said Miss Bordereau
with a cynical little sigh.
"I don't suppose you came out here yourself. Miss Tita must have had to lend
you a hand," I interposed with a pacifying intention.
"Oh, she insisted that we should push her; and when she insists!"
said Miss Tita in the same tone of apprehension; as if there were no
knowing what service that she disapproved of her aunt might force
her next to render.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: ignorari posse existimarent, prima nocte e castris Helvetiorum egressi ad
Rhenum finesque Germanorum contenderunt.
Quod ubi Caesar resciit, quorum per fines ierant his uti conquirerent
et reducerent, si sibi purgati esse vellent, imperavit; reductos in
hostium numero habuit; reliquos omnes obsidibus, armis, perfugis traditis
in deditionem accepit. Helvetios, Tulingos, Latobrigos in fines suos,
unde erant profecti, reverti iussit, et, quod omnibus frugibus amissis
domi nihil erat quo famem tolerarent, Allobrogibus imperavit ut iis
frumenti copiam facerent; ipsos oppida vicosque, quos incenderant,
restituere iussit. Id ea maxime ratione fecit, quod noluit eum locum unde
Helvetii discesserant vacare, ne propter bonitatem agrorum Germani, qui
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Tossed in the wind, and the peaks quaked in the blaze of the day
And the cocoanuts showered on the ground, rebounding and rolling away:
A glorious morn for a feast, a famous wind for a fire.
To the hall of feasting Hiopa led them, mother and sire
And maid and babe in a tale, the whole of the holiday throng.
Smiling they came, garlanded green, not dreaming of wrong;
And for every three, a pig, tenderly cooked in the ground,
Waited, and fei, the staff of life, heaped in a mound
For each where he sat; - for each, bananas roasted and raw
Piled with a bountiful hand, as for horses hay and straw
Are stacked in a stable; and fish, the food of desire, (13)
Ballads |
