| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the
name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves
and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those
who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have
taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable
portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a
thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to
the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.
MENEXENUS
by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: One hut, however, which he could just see between the
trees, was still smoking. As he approached he perceived,
at some yards from the ruins of the building, an old man
surrounded by weeping children. A woman still young,
evidently his daughter and the mother of the poor children,
kneeling on the ground, was gazing on the scene of desola-
tion. She had at her breast a baby but a few months old;
shortly she would have not even that nourishment to give
it. Ruin and desolation were all around!
Michael approached the old man.
"Will you answer me a few questions?" he asked.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: somebody-I reckon it was Joe Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe the
Government-declared war against Spain.
"Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin's line knew that the North by
itself couldn't whip a whole country the size of Spain. So the
Yankees commenced to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the
call. 'We're coming, Father William, a hundred thousand strong--and
then some,' was the way they sang it. And the old party lines drawn
by Sherman's march and the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim
Crow street-car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided.
country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized chunk of West,
and a South that loomed up as big as the first foreign label on a new
Options |
