| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: over in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the
Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious
complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here.
What I need is change of scene.
Saturday
I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built
me another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks
as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which
she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise
again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: thing."
Pray (interposed Antisthenes),[7] do you also know the way to be a
king?[8] since Homer praises Agamemnon, you are well aware, as being
A goodly king and eke a spearman bold.[9]
[7] Some modern critics (e.g. F. Dummler, "Antisthenica," p. 29 foll.)
maintain plausibly that the author is here glancing (as also Plato
in the "Ion") at Antisthenes' own treatises against the
Rhapsodists and on a more correct interpretation of Homer, {peri
exegeton} and {peri 'Omerou}.
[8] Or, "Have you the knowledge also how to play the king?"
[9] "Il." iii. 179. See "Mem." III. ii. 2.
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting
behind South Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour.
For weeks the rain scarce relented. The whole front of the
mountain slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay,
rock, and uprooted forest spewed over the cliffs and fell upon
the beach or in the breakers. Houses were carried bodily away
and smashed like nuts; others were menaced and deserted, the
door locked, the chimney cold, the dwellers fled elsewhere for
safety. Night and day the fire blazed in the encampment; night
and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven toilers in the
shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his rounds
|
