| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: and the Golden Gate opening up ahead, disclosing smoky San
Francisco on her many hills. Far off, blurred on the breast of
the sea, can be seen the Farallones, which Sir Francis Drake
passed on a S. W. course in the thick of what he describes as a
"stynking fog." Well might he call it that, and a few other
names, for it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of
discovering San Francisco Bay.
It was on this part of the drive that I decided at last I was
learning real mountain-driving. To confess the truth, for
delicious titillation of one's nerve, I have since driven over no
mountain road that was worse, or better, rather, than that piece.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: except to some slight extent, by adding here and deducting there. Any
large modification is out of the question, short of damaging the
democracy itself. No doubt many expedients might be discovered for
improving the constitution, but if the problem be to discover some
adequate means of improving the constitution, while at the same time
the democracy is to remain intact, I say it is not easy to do this,
except, as I have just stated, to the extent of some trifling addition
here or deduction there.
There is another point in which it is sometimes felt that the
Athenians are ill advised, in their adoption, namely, of the less
respectable party, in a state divided by faction. But if so, they do
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: men among them was like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay;
and being so hopeless a task, it was gone about with the less
care. Yet we could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among
the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they
would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to
breathe.
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech;
one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the
sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again
with an oath. "I tell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at
the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and
Kidnapped |
