| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: such a chance again, and you've squandered it, for what?"
Mademoiselle sat down.- "You're sordid," she said, with disgust.
"Sordid, am I?" His thick lips curled again. "I have had enough of
the dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held
a hand on which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I
bade you. Well, you've played it, and where's the fortune? We can
whistle for that as a sailor whistles for wind. And, by Heaven,
we'll need to whistle presently if the weather in the troupe
continues as it's set in. That scoundrel Scaramouche has been at
his ape's tricks with them. They've suddenly turned moral. They
won't sit at table with me any more." He was spluttering between
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Contented, in the falling gloom,
Saunter and see the roses bloom.
That these might live, what thousands died!
All day the cruel hoe was plied;
The ambulance barrow rolled all day;
Your wife, the tender, kind, and gay,
Donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud,
And bathed in vegetable blood;
And the long massacre now at end,
See! where the lazy coils ascend,
See, where the bonfire sputters red
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow of theirs is also a
long arm. For there is nothing of which our great politicians are so fond
as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to posterity. And they add
their admirers' names at the top of the writing, out of gratitude to them.
PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? I do not understand.
SOCRATES: Why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins
with the names of his approvers?
PHAEDRUS: How so?
SOCRATES: Why, he begins in this manner: 'Be it enacted by the senate,
the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,' who is our author;
and so putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own wisdom to
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