| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: to take place before nine. In this respect, however, the system was
elastic. In summer, that golden period for the coaching business, the
rule of departure, rigorous toward strangers, was often relaxed for
country customers. This method not infrequently enabled Pierrotin to
pocket two fares for one place, if a countryman came early and wanted
a seat already booked and paid for by some "bird of passage" who was,
unluckily for himself, a little late. Such elasticity will certainly
not commend itself to purists in morality; but Pierrotin and his
colleague justified it on the varied grounds of "hard times," of their
losses during the winter months, of the necessity of soon getting
better coaches, and of the duty of keeping exactly to the rules
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: the Athenians of his day, but to posterity and the world at large.
Whether such an incident ever really occurred as the visit of Crito and the
proposal of escape is uncertain: Plato could easily have invented far more
than that (Phaedr.); and in the selection of Crito, the aged friend, as the
fittest person to make the proposal to Socrates, we seem to recognize the
hand of the artist. Whether any one who has been subjected by the laws of
his country to an unjust judgment is right in attempting to escape, is a
thesis about which casuists might disagree. Shelley (Prose Works) is of
opinion that Socrates 'did well to die,' but not for the 'sophistical'
reasons which Plato has put into his mouth. And there would be no
difficulty in arguing that Socrates should have lived and preferred to a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: patted him on the head and said, 'Charles will restore the old
family'; by which I gather with some surprise that, even in these
days of open house at Northiam and golden hope of my aunt's
fortune, the family was supposed to stand in need of restoration.
But the past is apt to look brighter than nature, above all to
those enamoured of their genealogy; and the ravages of Stephen and
Thomas must have always given matter of alarm.
What with the flattery of bishops and admirals, the fine company in
which he found himself at Portsmouth, his visits home, with their
gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. Buckner (soon a
widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony kept for him, and visited at
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