| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: reveal the senselessness of the general[5] and the folly of the writer
who should select as praiseworthy the reckless imperilling of mighty
interests. On the contrary, what I admire is the fact that he had
taken care to provide himself with an army not inferior to that of his
enemy, and had so equipped them that his cohorts literally gleamed
with purple and bronze.[6] He had taken pains to enable his soldiers
to undergo the fatigue of war, he had filled their breasts with a
proud consciousness that they were equal to do battle with any
combatants in the world, and what was more, he had infused a wholesome
rivalry in those about him to prove themselves each better than the
rest. He had filled all hearts with sanguine expectation of great
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: he replied gravely.
Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts and
ought to be good for food, but their family connections were against them.
I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged to
the rat family.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake packing
a hamper basket in the kitchen.
`Now, Jake,' grandmother was saying, `if you can find that old rooster that
got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take him along.
There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn't have got hens
from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now.
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: far as Erineum. Let us go in, then, and, while we are reposing, the
servant shall read to us.
TERPSION: Very good.
EUCLID: Here is the roll, Terpsion; I may observe that I have introduced
Socrates, not as narrating to me, but as actually conversing with the
persons whom he mentioned--these were, Theodorus the geometrician (of
Cyrene), and Theaetetus. I have omitted, for the sake of convenience, the
interlocutory words 'I said,' 'I remarked,' which he used when he spoke of
himself, and again, 'he agreed,' or 'disagreed,' in the answer, lest the
repetition of them should be troublesome.
TERPSION: Quite right, Euclid.
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