| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: trade that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the whole
thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is,
after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see
to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a
broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.
So much for the morning, but the day passed and the devil anyone
looked near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I
thought this strange. People laughed a little at our firm and
their fine stations, and at this station of Falesa in particular;
all the copra in the district wouldn't pay for it (I had heard them
say) in fifty years, which I supposed was an exaggeration. But
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: circumstanced in regard to philosophy. Had Prodicus been present and said
what you have said, the audience would have thought him raving, and he
would have been ejected from the gymnasium. But you have argued so
excellently well that you have not only persuaded your hearers, but have
brought your opponent to an agreement. For just as in the law courts, if
two witnesses testify to the same fact, one of whom seems to be an honest
fellow and the other a rogue, the testimony of the rogue often has the
contrary effect on the judges' minds to what he intended, while the same
evidence if given by the honest man at once strikes them as perfectly true.
And probably the audience have something of the same feeling about yourself
and Prodicus; they think him a Sophist and a braggart, and regard you as a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: who teach them accomplishments, procure them canvases to spoil, the
books they may wish to buy, in short, all the little fancies which a
father finds so much pleasure in gratifying. If I had been compelled
to refuse these indulgences to my poor boys, who are so good and work
so hard, the sacrifice I made to the honor of my name would have been
doubly painful.
"In point of fact, the twelve years I have spent in retirement from
the world to educate my children have led to my being completely
forgotten at Court. I have given up the career of politics; I have
lost my historical fortune, and all the distinctions which I might
have acquired and bequeathed to my children; but our house will have
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