| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And wash out, like a tide that washes
Out of the sand what a child has drawn there.
God, what a shining handful of happiness,
Made out of days and out of eternities,
Were now the pulsing end of patience --
Could he but have what a ghost had stolen!
What was a man before him, or ten of them,
While he was here alive who could answer them,
And in their teeth fling confirmations
Harder than agates against an egg-shell?
But now the man was dead, and would come again
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: made me propositions, wanted me to drown a wife, and make a slave of
myself,--Orientals are so queer! But I thought I'd had enough of it;
for, after all, you know, Ali was a rebel against the Porte. So I
concluded I had better get off while I could. But I'll do Monsieur
Tebelen the justice to say that he loaded me with presents,--diamonds,
ten thousand talari, one thousand gold coins, a beautiful Greek girl
for groom, a little Circassian for a mistress, and an Arab horse! Yes,
Ali Tebelen, pacha of Janina, is too little known; he needs an
historian. It is only in the East one meets with such iron souls, who
can nurse a vengeance twenty years and accomplish it some fine
morning. He had the most magnificent white beard that was ever seen,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: you advise that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and
unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.--'Well,' some one will
say, 'but the many can kill us.'
CRITO: Yes, Socrates; that will clearly be the answer.
SOCRATES: And it is true; but still I find with surprise that the old
argument is unshaken as ever. And I should like to know whether I may say
the same of another proposition--that not life, but a good life, is to be
chiefly valued?
CRITO: Yes, that also remains unshaken.
SOCRATES: And a good life is equivalent to a just and honorable one--that
holds also?
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